Annie : A Long Way Back (Book Three)

By Alison Edwards

In June 1802, fourteen-year-old Annie lives with her parents near the coast. As an only child, Annie shares a close bond with her mother. Her father though is a harsh man and to Annie’s relief, he is often away from home.

Annie’s mother falls seriously ill and becomes dependent upon her. This puts a strain in their relationship. Sometimes after yet another week of housework and looking after her mother, Annie plays truant from church to walk up into the hills with her paper and pencils. One such Sunday she meets a servant boy from the other side of the hill, and an unlikely friendship develops.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alison Edwards
• Release date: May 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781838073558

Alison Edwards

Alison Edwards is a historical novelist currently working hard to complete the final book in her four part series A Long Way Back.Many years ago she used to entertain her children by making up little stories. These days her children are all grown up and she has more time to apply herself to her writing.A while back she began composing a short story for a national competition. She never got round to submitting the entry because she quickly realised her character, Sarah, deserved much more attention than the permitted two thousand wordsAlison describes herself as a private person who feels comfortable spending time in her own company. Yet she still looks forward the occasional evening with her family and closest friends. She prefers the countryside to the city and loves walking alone in the hills and along the coast.Her passion for writing can sometimes be all consuming. Sitting at her desk she often becomes so absorbed in her stories and characters that she loses all sense of the present. Many a time, she admits to putting down her pen and gasping in surprise at the view through her window. On a hot summer's day, she says she might easily expect to see snow on the ground like it was in the chapter she had just written.Alison is a big Brontë fan. Her favourite book is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

6th June 1802, Somersetshire.

The hillside rose steep and green. Its lower half appeared cloven by the sort of channel down which a stream might once have flowed. Indeed, at about the middle heights, there still trickled the occasional bead of water from a little square of muddy turf. The terrain above that boggy patch had forever been the haunt of creatures of the land and air but recently, fourteen-year-old Annie Brice claimed it as her secret place of retreat.

That Sunday morning she sat on the high bank, tapping the drawing board that rested on her knees. A minute earlier a pheasant posed briefly on the sheep-bitten grass and Annie had sketched frantically in yet another attempt to capture the detail of his slender head.

Now as she stared hard into the bracken, the church bell struck its first low note. The service had ended. A higher chime rang out, followed immediately by the next. As the tuneful peal rolled on, Annie willed the bird to strut out one last time.

The ringing ceased. She quickly inspected her drawing and thought the head looked out of proportion. Unpinning the paper and rolling it up, she jumped to her feet and resolved to finish it at home.

A long rock lay many strides ahead. Grey and low to the ground, it did not look particularly out of place amid the rough foliage. As she strode towards it, it appeared perfectly intact but she knew that to be a deception. Getting closer the diagonal black crack splitting it in two became apparent.

Annie stooped over the rock and fed her drawing board into the gap. Sliding her fingers from the stony crevice, she walked away, her roll of paper in her hand.

A voice called out from behind her. ‘What’s you got there?’

She glanced over her shoulder. Five yards away a large boy followed her. She did not know him.

‘’Tis a map?’

She continued to walk.

‘Don’t go!’

The desperation in his cry unnerved her, yet the severity of the gradient there prevented her from dashing straight down the hill. She paced on towards her usual route of descent. The rustle of chasing feet brought urgency to her escape but as she lengthened her stride, a hand pulled on her shoulder.

She closed her eyes on the tumbling clouds and kept them closed even after her back bumped against the ground. Some part of him brushed her arm. His breaths came close.

Stricken with a dread of violence, she lay there, clutching her roll of paper to her chest.

When many slow seconds passed and nothing happened, she dared to peek.

He leaned over her. His arm was stretched across her, its hand lost in the grass. ‘Is you hurt?’ he said.

She shook her head.

‘I tried to catch ’ee. What’s you got there?’

She hugged the paper tighter.

‘’Tis a map?’

She shook her head.

‘Can you not speak?’

No words came.

He leaned in closer. Brown locks hung about his cheeks as his dark eyes burned into hers. ‘Show it me.’

She shoved the drawing at him. Bright clouds came into view as he took it and rocked back into a sitting position.

When the paper opened out, blocking his face, Annie sprang to her feet.

He looked up. ‘Has you drawed this pheasant?’

‘May I have it back please?’

‘What’s you got upset for? I only wants to be friends.’

‘You have no right to be rough with people,’ she said, straightening her bonnet. ‘This is my Sunday best.’

‘I didn’t mean to. You shouldn’t go ignoring folks.’

‘May I have it back now?’

His hand slapped the ground. ‘Sit down a bit and I’ll give it ’ee back.’

‘I shall not sit down. I am late going home.’

He seemed taken aback by her sharper tone. Then he said, ‘Perhaps I’ll keep it then.’

She refused to allow him to manipulate her. The sketch became of little consequence. She only cared about her mother waiting at home.

His voice followed her first swift stride. ‘Don’t go!’

The terror of him pouncing again drove out any desire for caution. In no time she had skipped past the mud patch. ‘Come back!’ he cried, but she heard no noise of pursuit. His final cry sounded faint. ‘I didn’t mean to be rough with ’ee! Come back. You can have it back now!’

In the hollow at the base of the hill, she halted to look up at his tiny figure. Still staring up at him, she caught hold of the lock of fair hair blowing across her eyes, and casually tucked it back into her bonnet. Then with her head high, she turned and walked on towards home.

CHAPTER 2

With her roll of paper shielded from sight, Annie stepped out through the front door. Down the grassy slope, the morning sun brightened the tops of the beeches. As she strode towards them, she let her hand fall from her chest and the roll of paper swung at her side.

Before the onset of her mother’s illness, she always thought of their weekly visit to church as a pleasant enough ritual. Yet of all the changes in her life, she found the lonely excursion to St George’s the most depressing. Even so she never imagined resorting to truancy on consecutive Sundays. But for the first time ever, whether ill or healthy, her mother had proved difficult. On the Thursday she became angry over nothing and had remained irritable ever since.

Annie hurried on down through the trees. At the bottom of the bank, she stepped across the narrow trench, which carried the flowing stream water from the hills.

Immediately in front of her, the lane ran to the left and right. To go right would take her down to the village. Without a moment’s pause, she headed the opposite way.

After a minute the wooded slopes of Great Combe rose on each side, but rather than stay on the road that meandered between their feet, Annie stepped back over the stream-ditch and clambered upwards under shady oaks. In a matter of seconds, she paced out into open sunlight and on towards the familiar hillside with its dry channel.

Up she went, the scrub rustling beneath her feet. After passing the muddy ledge, her paces slowed against the steepest bank. Then she weaved a path to the cracked rock to collect her drawing board.

Finally at her spot, she dropped the board and paper to the ground and reached into her pocket for her pencil box.

Sitting down on the warm grass, she looked across to what last week had been the pheasant’s domain. Three black-faced ewes with their half-grown lambs nibbled there.

She could not be bothered to pick up her drawing stuff yet.

Her first truancy from church occurred quite unintentionally three months earlier. On that particular morning, she found herself behind with her housework. And then the necessity of rushing around caused further delays. In the certain knowledge that the service had begun, she dashed out of the front door and down the slope. Over the stream, instead of going right, she turned left and walked a few strides into the peaceful shadow of Great Combe. There she hoped to summon the strength to face the stares and remarks reserved for latecomers. But the rays of early spring shone through the bare branches, and the cries of birds called to her. She wandered up through the trees until she arrived on the high banks of the sunny hillside. And there she sat for an hour, simply enjoying the solitude and surrounding beauty.

For the rest of that week, to make amends for her guilty secret, she devoted herself entirely to her mother’s needs. Then on the following Sunday, much to her relief, the curate did not ask her to explain her rare absence. Instead, he merely stated he hoped her mother felt better.

There had been nothing unintentional about her next jaunt into the hills. On Easter morning she looked outside at the fine weather. The notion of sitting in the sunshine amongst the birds and butterflies appealed far more than sitting through an extended service in the stuffy church. When the time came to leave the house, she smuggled out her paper, pencils and a spare board. Climbing the hill she spotted a pair of tiny lambs frolicking around their mothers. At first the group trotted away from her approach but once she sat down, they seemed not to fret. Soon she became lost in drawing the two young sheep.

Now sitting on that very spot, she hoped to see the pheasant’s blue head pop up so she might make a sketch to replace the one that boy had seized. A bleating lamb disturbed her thoughts. As she studied his markings, he stared back and bleated again. Although he had grown big, she supposed him one of the little babies she had drawn all those weeks before. She glanced sideways at her board and paper but found no urge to pick them up and draw him again.

As she searched the landscape for inspiration, a regret of not going to church pestered her. Down the bank, sun-splashes on the sludgy puddle briefly caught her eye.

Far below, many fields of green crops and ploughed red earth rolled away to meet the next range of hills. Off in that direction, a hawk hovered. Last week she watched him hurtle downwards as fast as an arrow and then sweep back up with some tiny creature hanging from his talons. She hoped he would swoop now.

‘Oi!’

The sheep scattered. She turned to see that boy striding down the hill towards her.

‘I’s brung you your picture back,’ he cried, still approaching.

Within seconds he thrust a many-folded square of paper in front of her.

‘Thank you,’ she mumbled, taking it from his fingers. She did not need to open it. She knew his treatment of her drawing had turned it into a grey mess,

His steps stamped across the turf behind her.

‘I’s keeped it safe from Peter,’ he said, almost sitting on her roll of paper.

With no idea of whom he spoke, she shuffled across the ground to widen the gap between them.

‘Is you scared of me?’ he asked in a raised voice.

She shrugged her shoulders, hoping he would not get rough again.

‘I didn’t mean to pull ’ee over,’ he said. ‘You can hit me if you likes. Go on, I won’t hit ’ee back.’

Why could he not leave her alone?

‘Bain’t you drawing today?’

‘I think we may have frightened everything away,’ she said, glancing across the empty hillside.

‘You mean I’s frightened everything away.’

‘No. I didn’t mean that—’

‘Don’t be scared of me.’

‘I’m not.’

He grabbed the rolled-up paper. ‘What this drawing be?’

‘It is blank paper.’

‘You can draw me on it!’

She sighed uninterestedly.

‘Please,’ he said more softly, ‘I wants you to draw me on it.’

From the corner of her eye, she took a measure of his round face and straight nose.

His lips spread into a smile as he waved the roll in front of her.

‘All right, I’ll draw you,’ she said, snatching it from his fingers, ‘but only if you do not look at me.’

Taking the four pins from her box, she attached the paper to the board. The boy tilted his chin upward and stared ahead with a serious expression.

‘I cannot draw you down there,’ she said. ‘You will have to sit further up the hill so the light is on you.’

She bowed her head as he walked behind her.

‘Here?’ he asked from two yards away.

‘No, keep going.’

He took a stride backwards and sighed.

She nodded her approval.

His big boot stamped out a seat in the grass. ‘Shall I look up or down?’ he said, falling into it.

‘Neither. Look over my shoulder towards those hills. Yes, that will do. Keep your head still. You must not glance at me.’

Many a time Annie had looked at a piece of furniture and put its image onto paper. She had sat outside and drawn landscapes and birds and little animals. And although she had discreetly studied the dimensions and structures of numerous faces, she had never had a human model pose for her.

With one sweep of her pencil, she fashioned his oval head and then divided it horizontally with the faintest of lines.

Because he stayed at arms length and paid no obvious attention to her, all fear of him subsided. His dark eyes gazed out beyond her. As she sketched them, she detected no menace whatsoever.

Then he spoke. ‘Does you live with your family?’

‘Only my mother and father,’ she replied, shading the slope of his nose.

‘Does your father not make you go to church?’

‘Do not turn your head.’ She waited until he resumed his pose before answering. ‘He works away but he is due home tomorrow.’

In actual fact, she expected her father to stay away for at least another week. However he did not like people to know his business. So whenever anyone enquired, she always had to say he would be home tomorrow.

‘Does your mother not go to church?’

‘She is too poorly.’

‘What she be doing when you bain’t there?’

‘She sits in her chair until I get back.’

‘Do she not walk at all?’

‘A few steps is all she manages, and a few more when I support her. I really don’t like leaving her alone. I should have gone to church, not used today as an excuse to escape.’

‘Escape?’

‘I did not intend to say escape. I love her with all my heart and she loves me. We are closer than any mother and daughter in the world. But I put her in a bad temper on Thursday, and today I merely looked forward to getting out for an hour. We will be fine. I am sure it will soon be forgotten. I did not intend to say escape.’

Annie had no idea why she told him all that. Yet it seemed to satisfy his curiosity and his head returned to its rightful angle.

It had never occurred to her that lips could be so pleasant to draw. The top one appeared dark and delicately shaped. The bottom one, light and rounded with a deep shadow underneath. His lips turned upwards at the corners, even when he did not smile. As she pressed her pencil into the paper to capture the first of those two creases, he spoke again.

‘What’s you done to put her in a bad temper?’

‘I mentioned something I should not have.’

‘What were that then?’

‘Stop talking. I am trying to do your mouth.’

He did as she asked but the rest of his features demanded an answer to his question.

Oh, what harm could it do to tell him?

‘I sometimes have this dream,’ she said. ‘My mother used to laugh about it. Then when I mentioned it a few months back, she changed the subject and I thought nothing of it. But a few days ago, I dreamt it again. When I told her, she called it an evil dream and warned me never to speak of it again. She has never shouted at me before. It was awful.’

‘You remembers your dreams?’

‘This one I do. It never changes. But I’ve never told anyone about it apart from my mother.’

‘Cross my heart, I won’t tell a soul,’ he said, blessing himself. ‘You’s got to tell me now.’

She sighed and rested her pencil. ‘Well, I am a little child,’ she said, ‘and my mother is carrying me in scorching sunshine. We are in a sort of a yard and this huge old house draws near. I’m scared and so I hide my face in my mother’s shoulder. When I lift my head again, we are at the front door. A woman speaks and we follow her into a big room. I whisper that I want to get down.

‘My mother puts me to the floor. And then I see the girl. From the other side of the room, she sits there looking at me with beautiful dark eyes. She used to seem so big but now I would say she is only ten or eleven. She has this lovely smile. I run across the floor until I am standing in front of her. She leans forward and her lips move. I always try really hard to catch what she says but I can never hear her words. The very next moment, I am back safe in my own home.’

‘And then what happens?’

‘Nothing, that is it.’

‘I can’t see why that’d a-put your mother in a bad temper. T’were only a dream.’

‘I am starting to think there are bits of real memory in there. The sun on my head always feels so real and sometimes there is a great flock of fowl about my mother’s feet.’

‘It sounds to me like a farm. But it can’t be a real memory if the girl goes and disappears. Then again she could a-been a spirit. I believes in spirits.’

He got up and walked towards her. ‘I’s had enough of this posing. Let me see it.’

‘It is not finished!’

She felt his breath in her ear. ‘I be bald!’

‘It is not finished! Now go and sit back down so I can finish it.’

‘You can finish it when you comes up here next week.’

‘If you do not sit down, I shall never come up here again.’

He swung a kick at the turf beside her. Then he stomped the few strides before falling back into his position.

Placing her pencil against the paper, she swept in the first wave of hair. When he kept cutting his eyes, she regretted telling him so much about herself. ‘Stop looking at me,’ she said.

His face reddened as he gazed once again over her shoulder.

After many silent minutes, the drawing looked almost finished. For a final touch, she circled her fingertip into the paper to fatten out his plump cheeks.

With him continuing to stare sulkily into the distance, she felt uneasy with the thought of speaking next. She sighed and reached for a broad leaf to wipe the mess from her hands.

He jumped up. A great grin replaced his defiant lip as he bounded across the ground to stand over her. ‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘is I really that handsome? I wishes I could keep it.’

‘You can if you like.’

‘Peter’d only take it off me. You could put it on your wall so you don’t go forgetting me.’

‘No thank you but I am quite pleased with it. It is my first proper portrait.’

‘’Tis very good. You should draw that girl from your dream. Oh, I’d love to see if she…’

The clear note of the church bell distracted her. She pulled the pins from the paper. ‘I must go back to my mother now,’ she said, getting to her feet.

‘If you wants, I’ll go put your board in that rock.’

‘No thank you,’ she said, striding forward.

‘What be your name?’

She felt awkward saying it, ‘Annie.’

‘Will you come again next Sunday, Annie?’

‘No I really must go to church.’

‘What about an evening in the week then?’

She crouched over the cracked rock and slid her board into the crevice. ‘I cannot. I told you I don’t like leaving my mother alone.’

‘You said your father will be back. See if you can come. I goes to the top of this hill most evenings.’

‘Why do you go up there most evenings?’

‘To wait for ’ee.’

‘I must go,’ she said, marching away from him.

‘I be teasing ’ee!’ he said, catching her up. ‘Sometimes after work, I comes over to this hill to look at the sun going into the sea. See if you can come.’

CHAPTER 3

That night, after getting ready for bed, Annie stood in the light of a candle and pinned a sheet of paper to her best board.

Downstairs her mother had behaved more like her lovely self. Annie had built her fire up with coal and then left cut logs near the hearth for her to throw on in the night.

Because of her illness, her mother felt the cold. Even on the hottest days, she needed a small fire lit once the sun went behind the house. Annie never objected to putting up with a bit of heat. If it became too uncomfortable, she simply dragged her chair back a little further into the room. Her mother did not seem to mind speaking over her shoulder whilst sitting close to the fire.

She dropped the drawing board next to her pillow and fell alongside it. She decided that from now on, the girl in her dream must remain an unspoken secret.

Picking up her soft pencil, she outlined an oval head.

Taking more care she drew a pair of dark and beautiful eyes. After searching her memory, she considered the lashes needed lengthening and the arc of the lids needed more height. Several strokes of her pencil later, those eyes had taken on an almost circular appearance and gazed out otherworldly, but she felt happy with that.

Her sketching gained momentum. With the nose and mouth in place, the portrait grew realistic. She looked again into those eyes and remembered that boy saying her girl could be a spirit. Without pausing from her task, she deemed it likely that only bad spirits existed. Surely the good went straight to heaven and stayed there.

Sitting upright she held the board and paper at arms length and then slammed it down. Separately, each of the individual features seemed a good representation. Yet when thrown together, they did not look like the girl in the dream.

Pinning a new paper to the board, she fell back onto the bed. She closed her eyes and scoured the depths of her mind for guidance. In the dream she always saw the faceless woman who let them in. Then she saw the girl.

She saw a man too!

She opened her eyes. She had not remembered him before. He stood on his own by a door. She closed her eyes again but could not recall his face. She tried harder.

He had gone altogether now.

Shutting her eyes once more, she managed to push everyone else from her thoughts and concentrate on the girl.

The second sketch retained the same pretty attributes as the first, but she arched the eyebrows higher and made the nostrils less significant. Then she reformed the jaw line using rounder contours. Most importantly, she spent time capturing the smile. At the end she added flows of dark hair that curled about the shoulder.

With trepidation she again held the drawing at a distance and felt pleasantly surprised by what she saw.

Sliding off the bed, she stepped over to her clothes-press. She positioned her drawing board on the top by leaning it upright against the wall.

Keeping her eyes fixed on the portrait, she took three steps back and then bent her knees an inch at a time until her groping hand found the foot of her bed. Viewed from that low stance, the pretty girl looked exactly as she did in the dream.

Annie could not agree with that boy’s theory. Her girl looked nothing like a spirit for she had a warm living expression.

The following evening a rainy sky filled the parlour with early darkness.

Annie leaned forward on the edge of her seat. In the grate, yellow flames leapt and ducked around her arrangement of logs. She hastened her pencil across the paper to capture the liveliest shapes.

A mumbled groan issued from the next chair and her mother’s eyes opened. Formerly tall and beautiful, she now looked frail and older than her forty-nine years. As always on waking, she wiped a handful of white rag across her lips.

‘Mama, it is all right, you did not bring anything up.’

Her mother pushed the rag out of sight. ‘What is all this?’ she whispered, glancing one way then the other at the damp garments hanging around the fire. ‘You said you were going to iron it and put it all away.’

‘It is still raining. I had to bring it in again.’

‘But you must put it all away.’

‘I shall before I go up. These last few things are nearly dry.’

‘And what about the ironing?’

‘Do not fret. I plan to do it all in the morning.’

‘You said you were going to do it today.’

She put her sketch to the floor. ‘I told you it has been raining. Why are you annoyed with