As the harvest progressed Leonora worked hard in the garden, but she always made time to take Florien cans of cold beer and biscuits and would often sit with him in his tractor while he drove to the farm to dump the corn. She was aware of a change in him, but she didn’t want to harbour any hope that their friendship might be developing into something more profound. He never spoke of Alicia and he now looked at her with his eyes focused and alert, not through her to the shadowy image of his former lover. He took time with her. He asked her about herself, her feelings, her dreams and her memories of the Argentine. And for the first time he really listened.
Then one night as the harvest drew to a close, she lay beside him staring up at the stars as the campfire flickered and finally died, recounting the golden days of her early childhood in Hurlingham, the homesickness she suffered at Colehurst House and the passion that she had discovered she had for nature. ‘I don’t want to be anywhere else. A city would choke me to death.’
‘Me too,’ he agreed. ‘I hate the fumes and the noise.’
‘The chaos, everyone running everywhere without any time for anyone else.’
‘I’ve always lived in the countryside. I’d be lost without it.’
‘Where will you go, Florien?’ she asked and felt again that familiar pain in her chest.
‘When I was a boy we roamed from farm to farm in Yorkshire. Now Dad wants to go back.’
‘But why?’
Florien sighed heavily. ‘He’s stayed with Mrs Weatherby for many years because he likes her and the work has always been good. But, you know she’s going to sell the farm.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ she gasped in horror.
‘She won’t have told you because it doesn’t affect you. She’ll keep the house but that neighbour of hers who farms it for her now wants to buy it. He’s a big landowner. You only make money farming if you have a lot of land. Your aunt’s plot is very small.’
Leonora fell silent and gazed bleakly up into the glittering black sky above her. ‘Marcel left her,’ she said in a quiet voice.
‘I know. She looks miserable.’
‘She is.’
‘Why did he run off then?’
‘Probably for the same reason that your father wants to move up north. A new scene.’
‘He was young enough to be her son.’
‘But she loved him.’
‘Love is strange, isn’t it?’
Suddenly Florien felt something he had never experienced before. It wasn’t the intense burning of Alicia’s demonic aura or the insistent demands of possessiveness that had constantly pulled at him but something gentle and warm and sad. They lay side by side in silence while he tried to work out what it was that had come over him and Leonora contemplated an uncertain future. Tentatively he took her hand.
Leonora barely dared breathe or blink in case she ruined the moment. She closed her eyes and assured herself that he was offering nothing more than his friendship. She dared not presume anything more. She held his hand back, swallowing the longing that rose up her throat in a desperate cry. But like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus Florien had seen the light. It filled him up, made him want to laugh with happiness, prostrate himself in humility, yield to it in awe and he rolled onto his side and gazed into her features. Then he kissed her. Leonora was so stunned she lay as still as one of the logs on the fire.
When Florien pulled away and looked down on her face he noticed it had opened like a sunflower. In the golden light of the diminishing fire she looked beautiful, as if his kiss had transformed her like the kiss of a prince in a fairy tale. She smiled up at him, a smile that was at once tender and shy and her love empowered him so that he felt as strong as Hercules. While Alicia had emasculated him Leonora filled him with confidence so that when he kissed her again he didn’t doubt her affection but knew she gave it with all her heart. And this time Leonora responded by wrapping her arms around him and kissing him back.
‘Oh, Leonora, I’ve been such a fool,’ he exclaimed after a while, brushing his lips across her temple and smelling the scent of nature that clung to her hair.
‘You’re not a fool at all,’ she murmured happily.
‘Not any more. I’ll never be a fool again.’
‘Oh, yes you will. Life is a learning curve, don’t think you’ve graduated yet.’ She laughed lightly as he nuzzled his bristly chin into her neck.
‘How could I have missed you, Leonora? I just don’t understand.’ He shook his head and looked into her eyes. ‘You’ve always loved me, haven’t you?’
She nodded.