Ivy Tree (24 page)

"Agree that it was forgotten? I know, my dear." His voice was very gentle. There was no reason why I should have to bite my lips to keep the tears back, or why I should have to turn sharply aside and jerk a spray from the yellow rose, and be twisting it round and round in my fingers. This was nothing to me, after all. "You don't have to worry," he said. "I shan't torment you. There's someone else, isn't there? "

"No!" I hadn't meant to say it quite like that. I saw his brows lift a fraction.

"Or has been?"

I shook my head.

"In eight years?"

I looked down at the bruised rose in my fingers. "No. It's not that. It's only—"

"That people change. Yes I understand. You've changed a good deal, Annabel." I lifted my head. "Havel?"

His mouth twisted. "So it would seem. Tell me; do you—or perhaps I should say did you—intend to stay at Whitescar, now that you're back?"

At least here was a safe and easy path. I scuttled down it breathlessly, talking too fast. "I hadn't really made any firm plans. I told you I only came to see Grandfather. Until I got here, up North, I mean, I had no idea he was so frail. You knew he'd had a stroke? Actually, I'd decided to come back and see him before I knew of that. I hadn't been sure if he—if they'd want me back at Whitescar, but I wanted to see him if he'd let me. I didn't know what the situation would be, but he's been very kind." I hesitated. "They all have. I'm glad I came back. I'd like to stay till... as long as Grandfather's here. But afterwards ..." I stopped.

"Afterwards?"

"I don't think I'll stay afterwards." A pause. "And the place? Whitescar?** "There'll be Con." I was unwinding the split and twisted rose-stem with great care. A thorn had drawn blood on my thumb. I stared unseeingly at the tiny black gout of blood that blobbed and spilt glossily over the flesh, I didn't know he had moved until his shadow slithered forward a pace, slantingly, and fell across the grass beside me.

"You'd leave Whitescar to Connor Winslow?" I smiled. "I may have to."

"Don't beg the question. You know what I mean. If the place were yours, would you stay?" "No."

"Has that decision anything to do with me?" I swallowed. "You know it has." Quite suddenly, his voice came alive, the way flesh does after frostbite. He said: "You came back because you thought I had gone. When you found I was still here, you decided to go again. You make things very clear, Annabel."

I said, as steadily as I could: "I try to. I'm sorry."

There was a pause. He spoke almost as if he were reasoning quietly with me about something that didn't matter very greatly. "You know, I've regretted everything I said and did that night, far more bitterly than you could have done. I doubt if I'll ever quite forgive myself. Not only for losing my head and saying all that I said to you that last time we met, but for ever having allowed things to . . . get to the stage they did. You were very young, after all; it was I who should have known better. The sort of life I led with Crystal was no excuse for—for losing my head over you, when I could do nothing but hurt you."

"Don't, please, there's no need—"

"Don't think I'm trying to excuse myself for the way I spoke and acted that last night. I'd just about come to the end—or so I thought; except that, of course, one never does." He took in his breath. "So I finally lost my head, and begged you—bullied you—to go away with me, away from Whitescar and Forrest, and to hell with everybody, including my wife. And you refused."

"What else could I do? Look, there's no need to go back over this. I've told you it's best forgotten. It should never even have started. We should have realised where it would take us."

"That's what you said then, that night, isn't it? True enough, of course, but as far as I was concerned, much too late. I remember that you even promised to keep out of my way." He gave a brief smile that was more like a grimace, "So then," he said, "I told you that, if you weren't prepared to do as I asked, I never wanted to see you again. Oh no," at my involuntary movement, "I suppose I didn't put it quite so crudely, but I dimly remember a good many wild and whirling words, to the effect that either you would have to leave the neighbourhood, or I would, and since I was tied to Forrest and to my wife . .." He drew in his breath.

"But heaven help me, Annabel, I never dreamed you'd go-"

"It was better. You must see it was better."

"Perhaps. Though I wonder, looking back. No doubt, in the end, I'd have behaved like a reasonable mortal, and we could have found some . . . comfort. Fundamentally, I suppose, we're both decent human beings, and you, at least, kept your moral sense intact. Then, six years later ..." He paused, and seemed to straighten his shoulders. "Well, there it is. You were young, and I behaved badly, and frightened and hurt you, and you went. But you're older now, Annabel. Surely you must understand a little more than you did then, about the kind of life I led with Crystal, and the reasons why I was driven to act the way I did?"

"I do, oh, I do. It isn't that. Please don't think I—I'm bearing a grudge or—or anything. This, the way I feel now, has nothing to do with what happened then, try and believe that." I added, quietly: "Whatever was said or done, it's over, eight years over. There was nothing to forgive . . . and now, let's pretend there was nothing to remember, either. Let it go, Adam. From now. It's better not to talk about it any more. Good night."

I turned quickly away from him, but his shadow moved again across the turf, this time with something like a pounce. His hand caught at my arm, and, almost before I realised what was happening, he had pulled-me round to face him.

"Wait. Listen. No, I can't let you go like this. You've got to listen to me. It's only fair."

"I don't see that—"

"If you'd rather wait till you're less upset, I'll let you go now. But I've got to sec you again." I said breathlessly, trying to pull away from him: "No!" "What do I have to do? Grovel?" "Adam, I've been trying to explain—'*

"My God," he said, "what did I do that made you hate me so?"

"I don't, I don't! I told you."

"Then stay one minute, and listen. Look, Annabel, don't cry. It's all right. Just let me—wait just one minute, and let me tell you . . . You've told me it's all over for you; you don't love me. Very well, I'll accept that. Don't worry, I'll accept it. Good grief, how can I expect anything else? But you can't imagine that I'll just retire quietly to West Lodge and do nothing about it, can you?" Somewhere, far off behind the cedar tree, the owl hooted. I

said waveringly: "Do nothing about what?"

"About trying to see you again." His other hand came up now, and he had me by both arms, lightly, holding me a little away from him. "You see," he said, "there's still one thing that we haven't made plain. It isn't over for me."

I felt myself stiffen, and so must he have done, for he went on quickly: "No, all right, I've told you I'll accept the fact that you want to forget the past. But there's still the future, my dear, and you've told me there's no one else; you can't expect me to stand by and do nothing, now that you've come home." He smiled suddenly, and for the first time there was warmth and even lightness in his voice. "And I owe you a courtship, don't I? We'll have no more clandestine romance, my love! No more notes sneaked into the old ivy tree, no more damned chilly moonlit meetings in the summer-house, with the rhododendron leaves sopping wet, and you fussing about bats getting into your hair!" He shook me gently, and his smile widened.

"No, this time I'll woo you properly, by daylight, according to the book. I'll even start by calling on your grandfather—"

"No!" This time he must have felt the genuine shock of panic that kicked through me, jerking me rigid against the light clasp of his hands. Here was something I hadn't thought of. I had come to meet him tonight, with no very clear idea of what would be said, but only with the knowledge that the eight years'-past love-affair must, somehow, be kept from Con. Eight years was a long time, and it hadn't for a moment occurred to me that passion might be still there, smouldering, ready to flare up— into danger. It had seemed so easy: all I had had to do, after all, was to tell Adam Forrest the simple truth—that I did not care for him; that the past was dead and buried, and that I wanted it to remain so. Then, the interview once over, the friendly, civil good-byes of long-estranged lovers given ... I had hoped, more, known, that betrayal would not come from this direction. Yet here it was: after the days of smooth, too-easy masquerading, here, where it had been least expected, was danger. Desperately I tried to marshal my thoughts. But the only coherent thing that came to me was that Con must not know. I had a sudden vision of his face as he had looked at me, down in the lane beside the meadowsweet. . . and behind him Lisa's watchful, toffee-brown eyes.

"Please," I said shakily, "you mustn't do that. You mustn't come to Whitescar. Promise me that you won't come to Whitescar!"

"My dear, all right." He had dropped his hands when I spoke, and was staring at me now, the smile gone, and a deep crease gathering between his brows. "Just as you wish. Heaven knows I don't want to tease you. I'll promise anything you like, except not to try to see you again. You can't ask me to go quietly away and do nothing, knowing you're there at Whitescar. For one thing, we're bound to meet, and I—" the flicker of a smile again—"am bound to see that that happens as often as possible. But don't worry. I think I understand the way you feel, and I'll respect it. .. only you mustn't deny me the chance of trying to change it, now that we're free."

"Free?" The visions crowded in again, Con, Lisa, Grandfather, Julie ... I said, bitterly: "Which of us is ever free?"

"My dear-"

The very quietness of his insistence was terrifying. Something, that could have been panic, mushroomed up inside me, and burst into words I had never meant to say. "You mean, now that you're free! You mean you think you can dismiss me when it's convenient—forget me for eight years—and then, when I come back, just calmly expect to take up where you left off? You like to keep your mistresses in your own time, is that it? 'It isn't over for you!' " I mimicked him, cruelly—"No, I dare say not! Now that you're home for good, and your wife's dead, no doubt it'll suit you to have me around! Well, it doesn't suit me! How much plainer do I have to be? I've tried to put it kindly, but you won't take it. It's over. Over. So will you please, please, please, let me go and leave me alone?"

Even in that uncertain light, I saw the change in his face, and stopped, half-afraid. Then my thoughts steadied. There was danger here; I must not forget that. Whatever happened, whatever I told him, whether or not I tried to go on with the masquerade, there was danger. Why not take the risk, and get it over now?

Everything ought only to have to die once. Adam Forrest had gone through all this years ago; he mustn't be allowed to start it again, and for nothing. There was only one way to prevent that. Con had shown me how to play my cards, after all.

But for the moment I could find no way to do it. I stood silent, staring at him. Then the decision was taken from me. He spoke so pat on my thoughts that he might have been taking a cue. "If it weren't absurd," he said, very slowly, "if it weren't something so crazy as to sound like black magic ... I'd have said you couldn't be Annabel. Even in eight years, I wouldn't have thought you'd change so much."

I drew a sharp little breath, and choked over it, then I said quickly, and perhaps too loudly: "That's silly 1

Who else could I be?"

"That," he said, even more slowly, "is what I'm wondering." I suppose the interview had got through what poor defences I had had. I simply stood there, and stared at Adam Forrest, with a curious sense of drifting, of destiny. Those dark gods who watch over the moonlit trysts of lovers had helped, cajoled, and then betrayed me to this final irony. I made no attempt to speak, just stared at Adam Forrest, and watched the thing dawning, incredulously, in his face. Even "when he took a rapid step that brought him within a foot of me, I didn't move. He said slowly: "I must be going mad. It can't be possible. It can't." He put out his hands and turned me round, quite gently, to face the moon, I didn't meet his eyes. I looked down, shutting my lips tightly to stop them trembling. There was a long pause.

Then he dropped his hands again, and turned away abruptly. He took several rapid strides away from me, and I thought he was going to leave me there and then, and wondered in a brief moment of panic where he was going, but he stopped suddenly, and stood for a few seconds with his back to me, looking at the ground. Then he turned, churning his heel in the grass, and came back. His face looked quite impassive. "Is this true?"

I hesitated painfully. The moment stretched like a year. Then I saw the hesitation had answered for me. I nodded without speaking.

"You're not Annabel Winslow?"

I cleared my throat and managed to say, steadily enough, even with a kind of relief: "No, I'm not Annabel Winslow."

•••

"You're . . . not. . . Annabel." He said it again, the sharpness of his questions blurred now into bewilderment

This time I said nothing. The irrational feeling of escape, of relief, persisted. The flooding moonlight; the backcloth, as motionless and silent as paint of the ruined house and towering trees; the little sundial with its sharply-etched shadow thrown beside our own, these lent the scene an air of complete unreality. We were not people who ate and worked and talked through the sunlit days: we were beings from a fantasy world, creatures of a moonlit stage, living only by our passions, able to talk about love and death and pain, only in the subtle and rarefied voices of poetry. This was the world of the doomed black sail, the enchanted cup, the swallow flying through the casement with the single gold hair in his beak. We were Pervaneh and Rafi, floating like ghosts through the night-time garden, and to us the death of love would come as poetry; not fear, and quarrelling, the grimy commonplaces of the station platform, the unanswered telephone, the letter gone astray, the years of dragging loneliness ...