Ivy Tree (36 page)

We had come the best part of a mile, round the great curve of the river that led to West Lodge. I had turned him just in time. The chimneys of the Lodge were showing above the nearer trees. I spared a glance for them as the horse wheeled and cantered, sober and collected now, back along the river. His neck was damp, and I smoothed it, and crooned to him, and he flowed along smoothly and beautifully, and his ears twitched to my voice, and then, half-way to his own meadow, I drew him to a walk, and we paced soberly home as if he was a hack hired for the day, and bored with it, and there had been no few minutes of mad delight there along the sward. He arched his neck demurely and fiddled with the bit, and I laughed at him and let him have it, and when we came to the wicket he stopped and moved his quarters round for me to reach, as gentle and dainty as a dancer.

I said: "All right, sweetheart, that's all for today," and slid down off him and ducked under his neck to open the wicket. He pushed through, eager now for home. I turned to shut the wicket, and Rowan wheeled with me, and then snorted and threw up his head, and dragged hard at the rein I was holding. I said: "Steady, beautiful? What's up?" And looked up to see Adam Forrest a yard away, waiting beside the wicket, watching me.

He had been hidden from me by the thick hawthorn hedge, but of course he would have heard Rowan's hoofs, and seen us coming from some way off. He was prepared, where I was not. I actually felt the colour leave my face, and stood stock still, in the act of latching the gate, like a child in some silly game, one hand stiffly held out, the other automatically holding the startled horse.

The moment of shock snapped, and passed. The wicket clicked shut, and Adam came forward a pace and took Rowan's bridle from me. I noticed then that he had brought a bridle himself; it hung from a post in the hedge beside him, and there was a saddle perched astride a rail.

It seemed a very long time before he spoke. I don't know what I expected him to say; I know that I had time to think of his own reactions as well as my own; to imagine his resentment, shame, anger, bewilderment.

What he said was merely: "Why did you do it?"

The time had gone past for evasions and pretences; in any case Adam and I had always known rather too well what the other was thinking. I said merely: "I'd have thought that was obvious. If I'd known you were still at Forrest I'd never have come. When I found I had to face you, I felt caught, scared—oh, anything you like, and when you wouldn't just write it off and let me go, I suppose I got desperate. Then you decided I was an impostor, and I was so shaken that on the spur of the moment I let you go on thinking it. It was—easier, as long as I could persuade you to keep quiet about me." Between us the horse threw up his head and fidgeted with the bit. Adam was staring at me as if I were some barely decipherable manuscript he was trying to read. I added: "Most of what I told you was true. I wanted to come back, and try to make it up with Grandfather. I'd thought about it for some time, but I didn't think he'd want me back. What kept me away was the worst kind of pride, I know; but he's always rather played power-politics with money—he's terribly property-conscious, like a lot of his generation—and I didn't want to be taunted with just coming back to claim my share, or to put in my claim for Mother's money." I gave a little smile. "As a matter of fact, it was almost the first thing he said to me. Well, there it was, partly pride, partly not being able to afford the passage ... and, apart from all those considerations, there was you." I paused. "But after a bit I began to see things differently. I wanted desperately to come back to England, and I wanted not to be . . . completely cut off from my home any more. I didn't write; don't ask me why. I suppose it was the same impulse that makes you turn up unexpectedly, if you have to visit a house where you're not sure of your welcome; warning them gives people too much time to think of excuses, and be wary; whereas once you're on the doorstep they've got to welcome you. Maybe you don't know about such things, being a man, but I assure you

you, I'd manage to let

it's quite commonly done, especially if you're a person who's never sure of their welcome, like me. And as for you, I—I thought I might be able to keep out of your way. I knew that .. . tilings .. . would be long since over for you, but I thought you'd understand why I felt I had to come back. If I had to meet know I'd only come on a visit, and

was going to get a job elsewhere."

Rowan jerked his head, and the bit jingled. Adam seemed unconscious of the movement, I went on: "I'd saved a bit, and when Mrs. Grey—my last employer—died, she left me a little money, three hundred dollars, along with a few trinkets for keepsakes." I smiled briefly, thinking of the gold lighter, and the car permit left so carefully for Con and Lisa to find. "She was a cripple, and I'd been with her quite a time, as a sort of housekeeper-chauffeuse. I was very fond of her. Well, with the three hundred dollars, and my savings, I managed to pay for my passage, with something left over. I came straight up to Newcastle from Liverpool, and got myself a room, and a temporary job. I waited a day or two, trying to nerve myself to come back and see how things were. Of course, for all I knew, Grandfather was dead..." Half absently I stooped and pulled a swatch of grass, and began to wisp the horse. Adam stood without moving; I had hardly looked at him. It was queer that when a part of your life, your very self, was dead, it could still hurt you, as they say a

"I hadn't wanted to make too many inquiries, in case Con somehow got to hear of it. I'd even taken my rooms in the name of my last employer, Mrs. Grey. I didn't know what to do, how to make my approach. I wanted to apply to the lawyers for Mother's money, you see, only I wasn't sure if I dared risk Con's finding out I was home. Well, I waited a day or two, wondering what to do—"

"Just a minute." Adam, it seemed, was listening, after all. "Why should you not 'dare' let Connor know you were home?"

I ran the wisp along Rowan's neck, and said briefly: "He tried to kill me one night, along the river, just near where we found him with Julie."

He moved at that. "He what}"

"He'd wanted to marry me. Grandfather wanted it, too. You knew that. Con hadn't a hope then—or so he thought—of getting the property any other way, so he used to—to harry me a bit. Well, that night he threw a bit of a scene, and I wasn't just in the mood for it; I wasn't exactly tactful, and I made it a bit too clear that he hadn't a hope, then or ever, and . . . well, he lost his temper and decided to get rid of me. He chances his arm, does Con." I lifted my eyes, briefly, from my task. "That's how I guessed, last night, that he'd have gone to find Julie. That's why I followed her." "Why did you never tell me?" His tone was peremptory, proprietorial, exactly as it might have been eight years ago, when he had had the right.

"There was no chance. It happened the last night I was here. I was on my way home, after I'd left you in the summer-house. You remember how late it was. You know how I always used to go over the river by the stepping-stones, and then home by the path and the bridge, so no one would know I'd been to Forrest. It was just as well I bothered, because that night I ran into Con."

"Oh, my God."

"That was the—the other reason why I ran away. Grandfather took his part, you see. He'd been angry with me for months because I wouldn't look at Con, and there'd been scenes because he'd found I was staying out late, and I'd lied once or twice about where I'd been. He—I suppose it was natural, really—he used to storm at me, and say that if I ever got into trouble, I could go, and stay away ..." I smiled a little. "I think it was only talk and temper; it was a bit hard on Grandfather, being saddled with an adolescent girl to look after, but of course adolescents take these things seriously. When I got home that night, after getting away from Con, I was pretty nearly hysterical. I told Grandfather about Con, and he wouldn't believe me. He knew I'd been out somewhere, and suspected I'd met somebody, and all he would say was 'where had I been?' because it was late, and he'd sent Con to find me himself. I think he just thought Con had lost his head and had been trying to kiss me, and all I was saying about murder was pure hysteria. I don't blame him, but there was a . . . pretty foul scene. There's no point in raking it all up: you can imagine the kind of things that were said. But you see why I ran away? Partly because of what had happened between you and me, and because I was scared stiff of Con ... and now because Grandfather was taking his part, and I was afraid he and Con would start ferreting about, and discover about you. If Crystal had found out. . . the way she was just then..."

Rowan put his head down, and began to graze with a jingling of metal. I paused, leaning one hand against his neck. "Well, you understand why I was afraid to come back to Whitescar, even now. If Con had been in charge here, alone, I'd never have dared, but once I found that Grandfather was still alive, and still playing at power-politics between me and Con and Julie, and that Julie might be exposed to exactly the same sort of danger as I had been ..."

"And that I had gone."

"And that you had gone," I said steadily, "I knew I'd have to come back here. It would still have been a pretty sticky thing to attempt, in the teeth of Con and Lisa, and not being sure of Grandfather's reception of me, but then Con himself appeared like Lucifer out of the blue, and presented me with what looked like a nice, peaceful, Connor-proof homecoming. I rather grabbed at it. I only planned, you see, to stay here as long as Grandfather lived."

"I begin to see. How did you fall in with Connor?"

"I took a risk which I shouldn't have taken, and went to take a look at Whitescar. I didn't even get out of the bus, just went along the top road from Bellingham to Chollerford, one Sunday. I got out at Chollerford, to get the bus along the Roman Road. I—I wanted to walk along the Wall, to—to see it again." Nothing in his face betrayed the fact that lay sharply between us; that it was on the Wall that he and I, sometimes, by chance —and oh, how carefully calculated a chance!—had met. I said steadily: "Con saw me. He waited his chance and followed me. He recognised me, of course, or thought he did. When he came up on me I was startled, and scared stiff, and then I saw he was just doubtful enough for me to pretend he'd made a mistake. So I gave him the name I'd been using, and got away with it." I went on to tell him, then, of the interview on the Wall, and the subsequent suggestions that were made to me. "And finally, when I realised that Con was fairly well 'in' with Grandfather, and that he and Lisa had it in for Julie, and that Grandfather himself had had a stroke . . . Well, I thought to myself, this is one way of getting home with Con not lifting a finger to stop me. So I agreed. And it went off well enough, until I found that you were still here..."

He said with sudden impatience: "That horse isn't sweating. Leave that alone. We'll turn him loose." He began to unbuckle the cheek-strap, adding, with as much emotion as if he were discussing the price of tomatoes: "Go on. When did you find I was still here?"

"Grandfather mentioned it, quite casually, the first evening. I'd managed to chisel a bit out of Con and Lisa, about the fire, and your taking Crystal to Italy, and then Vienna, and the nursing-homes and everything, and her death, but you know Con, he's interested in nothing but himself, and I didn't dare press too much about you and your affairs. When I heard from Grandfather that you hadn't gone permanently, it gave me a shock. I went that night to Con and said I wanted to back down. He—threatened me. No, no, nothing like that, he just said what was true, that it had gone too far, and that a hint of the 'truth' would shock Grandfather. Of course I knew I'd told Grandfather nothing but the truth, but for all they get across one another, he thinks the sun rises and sets in Con, and it would have finished him to know what sort of a swine Con is—can be. It still would. I realised that I'd have to stay, but the thought of having to meet you was . . . terrifying. I went over to Forrest that night, the night before you came."

"To lay the ghosts?"

"I suppose so. But the next night... I knew you'd come, I don't know how." You always did . . . Nobody had said the words. He wasn't looking at me; he was sliding the bridle off, over Rowan's cars. The horse, his head free, flung it up and sideways, and swerved away from us, thrusting out into the sunlight at a trot. Then he dropped his head, and began to graze again. Adam looked down at the bridle in his hands as if he wasn't quite sure what it was, or how it had got there. Then he turned, and hung it with great care beside his own. "And when I came, you found it easier to let me think you—that Annabel was dead."

"Wasn't she?" I said.

He turned then, and for the first time we really looked at one another. "Why should you have thought so?

After you'd gone, when you'd had time to think . . . there'd been so much . . . you must have known 1. .." His voice trailed away, and he looked down at his feet.

I felt something touch me, pierce almost, the armour of indifference that the hurt of eight years back had shelled over me like nacre. It was not enough to have learned to live with the memory of his cruelty and indifference; I had still to care.

I said, hardly enough: "Adam, eight years ago, we quarrelled, because we were unhappy, and there was no future unless we did the sort of harm we had no right to do. I told you, I don't want to go back over it. But you remember as well as I do, what was said."

He said roughly: "Oh God, yes! Do you think I haven't lived through every minute of that quarrel since?

Every word, every look, every inflection? I know why you went! Even discounting Con and your grandfather, you'd reason enough! But I still can't see why you never sent me a single word, even an angry one."

This time the silence was stretched, like a shining thread that wouldn't snap. The sun was strong now, and fell slanting over the eastward hedge to gild the tops of the grasses. Rowan rolled an eye at us, and moved further away. The tearing sound as he cropped the grass was loud in the early-morning stillness. When I spoke, it was in a voice already heavy with knowledge; the instinct that sees pain falling like a shadow from the future. "But you had my letter."