Chapter 23

The horses plodded contentedly onwards; nodding their heads in that manner that suggested a conversation; with James and now Abby sitting easily in the saddles. The old track bed had meandered lazily between river and the valley sides, enlivened occasionally by a farm crossing, or a small bridge crossing a stream hurrying to join the main river. The land was quite open, just small copses of trees dotted haphazardly on hillocks, or along the course of the small streams. Cattle and sheep grazed and browsed, unfazed by their passage, only the odd individual raising a head to watch them pass. Looking to the right she could see a road, ascending steeply out of the valley, and realised that this was the road she had taken when she first arrived here. Looking back to that day she felt a sense of wonder that so much could have happened to her, just by a whim to seek a place that her mother had mentioned.

They rode on in companionable silence for a while. James broke the silence when he asked.

"So what started you in the City, which I must say is very impressive to many people around here?" Abby thought for a while before answering.

"It was an accident more than design. I started working in an Insurance Brokers office, and went on from there."

"Come on, Abby, there's got to be more than that."

"Well yes there was. They did very little for their commission, advising customers on the best place to get insurance, the best place always being the company which offered the greatest commission to the Broker. I moved into Financial Services, only to find the same thing. The best investment would always be the one which offered the adviser the best commission, whether it was right for the customer or not. It didn't take much of a brain to work out how it was done, so when I was offered the chance of becoming an adviser I jumped at it. At that time you didn't need any qualifications. Working with money all day tends to make you a little blasé about it, and the challenge was not how much money you were dealing with, but how much you could make it do. Sometime later I heard of a chance to work for one of the Merchant Banks, not dealing of course, that came later, but doing administration for the dealers. If you just regard the job as placing papers in the right order, and in the right place, then you will do it for ever. I read the paperwork to try and understand what was happening. I spent time at the on-line computer as well, watching the movements. Everything else was luck. The Director came into the office one day and caught me working at some figures. I had in my imagination taken up an offer a few days before, and made a good profit on my supposed investment. He asked me what I was doing and I explained. He said to keep making the supposed investments, but to keep a full record. He would check them from time to time, and obviously thought I was doing alright. A few months later he told me that I was to start dealing."

James gave a disbelieving laugh. "Huh! Abby, you make it sound so easy. I don't believe that it could be as simple as that."

"Well I suppose it wasn't that simple. I would usually be in the office from about seven in the morning until ten at night, but that was so that I could do all my paperwork, and then have time to work on my imaginary investments."

"Fifteen hour days!" James was shocked. "When did you have a life?"

"I didn't. I worked Monday to Friday, and then Saturday and sometimes Sunday as well."

"How long did this go on for?"

"Ten years or so."

James shook his head in dismay. "Well it sounds to me as if you have worked enough for a lifetime however you look at it. So now you have the time to start living life. God knows its precious enough."

James's last comment sounded too heartfelt to be just another of his casual lines. Abby realised that there was a memory of the Falklands there, and wanted to ask, but stopped herself, knowing that James wouldn't talk about it. She was grateful that he hadn't asked, even in a roundabout way of her supposed high rewards from the Bank. It was ironic, that their friendship was getting closer, but there were still things that neither of them wished to talk about. She once again took notice of where they were riding. Turning in the saddle she could look back and see the valley. The trees patched dark greens and coppers against the lighter green of the pastures. The valley sides rose slowly in another shade of green up to the perfect cerulean blue of the sky. She had heard someone once talk about a big sky; they were talking about the Kansas prairies. This could never be described as a big sky, just a small strip of blue framed by the heights above the valley, but nonetheless the picture was perfect. The various shades of green complimenting the blue of the sky.

With that idyllic picture in mind she turned to James.

"It must have been good, growing up here in the valley." He thought for a while.

"I can't say that I felt that. This was all I knew, so a feeling like good didn't come into it. There was a certain freedom, particularly after my riding reached the standard that Father considered safe. Then I was allowed out on my own. I couldn't really come to harm, not with the tenants all keeping an eye out for me. As a kid you accept things as they are, never worrying about why your life was as it was. It was only when I went away to school, that I realised how lucky I had been."

"You went away to school?"

"Not at first." He shook his head. "I went to the school in Paverton until I was eight, then I went to Boarding school."

"How did you get to Paverton?"

"On the train. With all the other kids, and that included your mum."

Abby was stunned for a moment; she had never considered something so mundane as her mum going to school. It was obvious to her now, that there wasn't a school in the village.

"That must have been exciting." James smiled as he remembered those days.

"The lads would get up to all kinds of mischief, not at the station of course, your Grandfather would not allow any larking about, but on the train yes. There was many a boy pushed onto the luggage rack, and left there when the train reached Paverton."

"Did that happen to you?"

"Yes." He replied with a grin. "When I was small, but later nothing, probably because they realised who my father was, and imagined that some dire retribution would result from bullying me. It wouldn't have though. Dad seemed to take the view that this was part of the character forming that all boys had to experience." Abby laughed delightedly. James decided that he rather liked to hear Abby laugh, and broadened his smile. The laughing lady delved further.

"Then you went away to Boarding school?"

"Yes. That was when I started to realise how good life had been here, and decided that I would always want to live here."

"But you did go away."

Abby almost without thinking had asked the question from which, she had earlier shied away.

"Yes I did. Not mind you because I wanted to, it had to do with the gentlemen of Argentina, thinking to grab hold of something that didn't belong to them. Once I got back, I knew that my earlier decision was the right one." James had skied over the topic without delving into the detail. Abby was disappointed. Not just because she was curious, but also she wanted to try and understand something of that which James' had experienced. She made up her mind to try another tack later on.

The character of the valley was changing. The pasture land was diminishing, and trees were taking over.

"Are we leaving the farm land behind?" She asked.

"Yes." Replied James. "From here on it is pretty well all forestry."

"Yours I presume?" James laughed hearing the touch of friendly sarcasm in her voice.

"Well some of it anyway. A huge chunk of the forest is Crown Estate."

"How did that come about?"

"More history I'm afraid." James grinned. "Well we're back to the aftermath of the Plagues of the Middle Ages. The Lords held their lands by gift of the Monarch. Kings are different; they could give something away, and then take it back if it pleased them. Well they could in those days. If the Lord to whom it was entrusted was no longer around, then the King could take it back, or give it to someone else. Often it would become part of Monastery lands, and after Henry the Eighth, it again became Crown property. With all these transfers back and forth, and no-one really knowing where the boundaries were, odd little bits slipped through the net, so the Yeomen who had grabbed one of those little bits, got to keep them."