The Hardie Inheritance by Anne Melville Page B

little girl the barracks had already been in evidence at the foot of the hill, but only later had the sprawling buildings of the Morris Motor Works begun to spoil the view. They were still spreading. She could see from here the unfinished building which would contain a new production line – and between the spokes of the roads which stretched from Carfax was growing a grid of narrow streets to house the workers who were swarming to Oxford to take employment in the motor car factories. The bricks and concrete were creeping towards Greystones. At all costs she must preserve her own land as a buffer; a no-man’s land on which no builder could set foot.
    â€˜The villagers would lynch me if I let the wood go,’ she said laughingly. The inhabitants of Headington Quarry claimed old-established poachers’ rights on the strip of woodland whichbordered the stream. They took furze for their fires and acorns for their pigs and rabbits for their pots. There were plenty of rabbits left to be eaten at Greystones itself and, in return for the Hardies’ forbearance in respect of the lower land, it was tacitly understood that no one would trespass or steal from the cultivated ground higher up the hill.
    â€˜Do you remember how we used to play there as kids?’ Andy asked her.
    â€˜I remember how you planted a forest once. Acorns and conkers and sycamore wings. All in about a square yard of ground. Shall we see how it’s grown?’
    She felt once again like the little girl she had been when nine-year-old Andy first showed her his plantation as she led the way into the wood – although the shoes and stockings she was so unusually wearing were inappropriate for such an exploration. Andy needed to take her hand as she made an unsteady crossing of the stream by means of a fallen tree trunk, and he did not let it go. She thought nothing of it. It was as if they were children together again. Only when they reached the boulders was her heart pierced by a memory of the day when she had ceased to be a child.
    The two huge boulders stood in the silent heart of the wood, near the place where the stream fed a deep pool from which it emerged both invisibly and inaudibly on the further side. Grace knew now that the stones must have been smoothed and rounded by a glacier many thousands of years earlier; but as a little girl she had thought of them as a giant’s playthings, for each was indented in one place only, the shape resembling a handhold.
    As she grew older she had brought her anxieties and hopes to the boulders, using them as both comforters and confidants. But it was not the emotional crises of her early years that she remembered now. It was here that Andy had kissed her for the first time. It was here, a year later, that they had said goodbye.
    â€˜Do you remember –?’ she began; but quickly bit back the words. It was the wrong thing to say – the wrong thing at anytime, but especially now, when Andy was holding her hand so tightly.
    â€˜Of course I remember. I wish–’ Andy in his turn left words unspoken, but it was because he was already pulling her into his arms, pressing his lips against hers. Not, as on the occasion of that first kiss, with a boy’s shyness and joy, but with all the force of a man’s passion. Grace felt her lips bruising against her teeth as her head was forced backwards. Andy’s body pushed her own against one of the boulders. One arm was round her waist, holding her close, while the other groped underneath the skirt of her dress. Between kisses, his breath emerged with a noisy shuddering and he muttered something which she could not hear or understand.
    Grace, for her part, was faint with excitement and wonder. She was not sure what was happening – what Andy was going to do or what she herself was supposed to do; but with all her heart and all her body she wanted it to happen. She must tell him, though, lest he should think her unwilling when