Free The Trespass by Barbara Ewing Page B

on into the shimmering afternoon.
    She took the short cut to the town through her uncle’s fields; in the distance her uncle and her cousin John walked with a horse in the sunshine. In each field the wheat stacks stood tidily together, except for one field that was still to be harvested. She skirted the golden, waving stalks so as not to damage them; her skirt caught in the brambles and the bushes of the hedges at the side of the fields.
    In a little more than an hour she saw the high steeple of the church. The small town was bustling: it was market day. Voices shouted their wares: turkeys, rabbits, ducks’ eggs, kaleidoscopes, lace, tin soldiers. A friend of her uncle’s recognised her, bowed, raised his hat. Harriet smiled demurely, bowed also, did not stop. John Bowker was standing, as he had said, under the clock. It struck a quarter to three as she walked towards him. The moment he saw her he smiled in relief and removed his cap. She felt rather shy, decided she would return at once, lifted the cover of the basket and took out the letters and the brochures as she approached him.
    ‘Good afternoon, miss.’
    ‘Good afternoon, John Bowker. I have written the letters for you.’ And she handed the bundle of papers to him.
    In his enthusiasm to take the letters he took her gloved hand with them, felt her pull away, startled. He apologised at once, blushing slightly as he realised what he had done.
    ‘I hope – I hope the letters will change your life as you wish,’ and Harriet began to turn back the way she had come.
    ‘Miss – Miss – Harriet – I heard Mr John use your name – Miss Harriet, have you got just a bit of a minute more to spare?’
    Harriet looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘My friend – he has a room just near here, he wants to travel too and he cannot write, please, Miss Harriet, it would take such a short time.’
    She felt embarrassed, as if he should not have asked for more: he sensed this and blushed again.
    ‘Miss Harriet, this is life and death for the likes of us, and a few minutes for you, else I wouldn’t have bothered you.’ He looked quite desperate. She half-looked about her.
    ‘All right,’ she said at last, but reluctantly. ‘But only a moment.’
    As if he understood at once that she might not like to walk with him, he moved slightly ahead of her, looking back now and then to see if she was following, holding his letters and his brochures carefully in front of him. Hens ran across her path and a huge cauliflower rolled out of a doorway. She avoided both of these impediments and the rabbit carcasses hanging from a nail and the blood that dripped from them and followed John Bowker round a corner and away from the main street down a narrow alley. Suddenly the streets were mean and dark, harder for the sun to penetrate. Doorways here looked darker and dirtier at once; the people who lounged in them made her feel uneasy and she wished she could go back. Backtracking down another narrow alley John Bowker slowed down and waited for her. Ahead of them stood several old hovels in need of much repair and what looked like a crumbling barn.
    ‘It’s just here, Miss Harriet.’ And he whistled. A shock of red hair appeared at a small hole in the wall of the barn, disappeared again immediately. Then, the red-haired person appeared from one of the dark doorways, grinning.
    ‘This is Miss Harriet,’ said John. ‘This is Seamus.’
    Harriet nodded politely. But Seamus put out his hand and smiled and smiled and looked as if he might cry. Harriet extended her gloved hand.
    ‘You came then, miss,’ said Seamus. ‘And we’re the lucky ones, in the name of God we’re that. Come in. Come in.’
    He was Irish. She had been warned so often about the Irish rogues that had come to England after the failure of the crops in their own country; sometimes in a carriage she passed groups of men near where the new railways were being built, angry-looking and sullen and dangerous. Her heart