Green Darkness (3 page)

“Was there once a castle on that hill, too?” Celia asked involuntarily, still ignoring the prohibition which came partly from inside herself, partly from Richard who kept his intent gaze fixed on the duckling.

“Oh, yes,” answered Holloway, faintly surprised. “What a clever guess. Though I suppose there’s hardly a place in England which hasn’t seen human habitation. For centuries, until early Tudor times, an ancient family called the de Bohuns had a stronghold on ‘Tan’s Hill,’ nothing left now but rubble and bits of wall. And they say that long before the Romans came there was a Druid temple up there, too.”

“Fascinating,” said Celia, gulping down her Chablis. “And what about the ghost?”

John Holloway laughed. “Several have been reported by frightened kids and credulous old women. The most popular one is the ‘black monk.’ My great-aunt claimed that when she was a girl she saw the monk gliding down the hill into the town on a mid-summer’s eve.”

“Why
black
monk?” asked Celia, smiling.

Holloway shrugged. “The Benedictine habit, I suppose. There’s some theory that this ghost was once private chaplain at Cowdray, and got tangled up with a village wench. Sort of scandal folks love to hand down through generations.”

Richard pushed aside his knife and fork. He raised his head and said sharply, “England abounds in ghostly black monks and gray ladies. They come sixpence the dozen. Holloway—if I’m to examine the court cupboard, I think that after coffee we should go directly to your showroom.”

Celia lay quietly with eyes closed, in the lounge chair by the swimming pool at Medfield Place, forcing herself to remember what happened next, though it was painful.

I don’t know what came over me. I insisted on exploring St. Ann’s Hill then and there. The others didn’t want me to, but Mr. Holloway, in passing through the Market Square, pointed to where it was. I escaped from the showroom while Richard was inspecting the court cupboard. I ran down an alley, past the church, and slipped between the short poles that bar the way to cars. I climbed the muddy footpath, and mist swirled around me. I couldn’t see much except big dark trees high against the gloomy sky, yet I knew my way.

On top I turned right and clambered up a sharp rise. The holly pricked me, I was stung by nettles. I reached some moss-grown stones, and knew they had been part of a wall. Something stopped me from climbing over the stones. I
couldn’t.
I was frightened yet excited. Then beyond, inside the wall, I saw a wavering yellow light, like a lantern. A tall dark shape stood by the lantern. I cried out to the shape with wild longing. But, it disappeared. I began to cry, and floundered back down the hill. I must have run to the Spread Eagle, for there the others found me in the bar. I was still crying by the great fireplace when Richard and the Holloways rushed in. They had been looking everywhere for me. The Holloways laughed uncomfortably as I stammered out what I’d done.

Richard said nothing, but his face went grim and his eyes blazed with anger I had never seen before, or guessed possible. He bundled me into the car. He said cruel things to me on the way home. That I was drunk, that I was hysterical. That I had seen nothing on the hill. And that night he did not sleep with me.

Her heart gave a physical lurch and her mouth went dry. Dear God, it’s been seven months of excuses. He said he had a back pain, a slipped disc. He
said
he was going to an osteopath, but wouldn’t answer my questions. Lately, I’ve no longer dared ask. He moved to the dressing room. We’ve never mentioned Midhurst, yet the night before we had known such bliss in each other.

She opened her eyes at a stirring by the poolside, and saw that Dodge, the butler, was approaching from the garden door of the manor house. Dodge bore a tray of whiskies, pink gins and sherries. He was large, pompous, very correct. Exactly the kind of butler they kept saying here in England that one couldn’t find any more. But one
could.
With American dollars. One could find an adequate staff even to run a lovely but inconvenient house in the country. There was Mrs. Dodge for cook. There was a housemaid and daily help from the village. If necessary, and it had not been yet, there was Richard’s old nanny, who inhabited the empty nurseries.

I
should
have got pregnant right away when Richard wanted me to, Celia thought, and felt a clutch of confused panic. She had been afraid of pregnancy.

“What’s the trouble, Lady Marsdon?” asked a fluting, faintly malicious voice beside her.

Celia started and turned her head. It was Igor, the new dress designer all London was flocking to. He was a beautiful young man with a helmet of golden hair. There was a faint trace of cockney in his voice.

Igor,
thought Celia, thankfully reverting to banality—probably something like Ernie or Bert to begin with. Oh, well.

“No trouble,” she said lightly. “Have you gone all ESP and fey? I’m sleepy from the swim is all.”

“You know, I
do
feel things,” said Igor, calmly sitting down on another chair and sipping a pink gin. “I’m sensitive to mood, and when I see my charming hostess looking absolutely
dire
—like Melpomone, the tragic muse, or whatever she was, or possibly Deirdre of the Sorrows . . .”

“How frightfully intellectual you’re getting,” snapped Celia, her usual tolerant fondness for Igor suddenly cracking. “And
you,
darling, are the quite poisonous product of decadence, designing clothes for women to make them look hideous. Oh, quite subtly I grant you, but that purple tent you made for me—
really,
Igor, I’m not such a fool as you think.”

He rose gracefully and made her a little bow. “I’ll design you something which will
utterly
seduce Richard, I promise.” He spoke with sudden gentleness, almost sympathy.

She quivered inside. Her mouth tightened. “I think, Igor, that I’m in no need of your assistance in regard to Richard, and in the words of my rich American father—” she was interrupted by Dodge, who had come back to announce, “Luncheon is served, my lady.”

She bent and strapped on her sandals. Her indignation faded, and she felt beaten, helpless. What
would
Amos B. Taylor have said? The scarcely known father who made millions in synthetic textiles after the war, who had died of cancer seven years ago when she was sixteen—most probably he would have said, “Oh, talk to your mother, Baby. I wouldn’t know what advice to give a girl. Now if Lily and me’d had a
son
. . .”

He never realized how often he said that, nor how much it hurt her. Celia left Igor, and walking along the poolside marshaled her guests. “As you are,” she said. “In the garden room. Dodge simply won’t serve out here, it upsets his dignity.”

Myra laughed. “You’re learning fast, my sweet. I live in positive terror of
my
butler, and he isn’t nearly as formidable as Dodge!” The laugh displayed flashing white teeth, possibly false despite Myra’s comparative youth. People in England seemed to think nothing of false teeth, even when they got them from the National Health.

Celia smiled gently. Her American teeth were her own—small, pearly, and the product of expensive years in braces. She noted that even as Myra spoke, the long green eyes turned again towards Richard.

You’ll get no place in that quarter, Myra dear, Celia thought. Nor will
you—
she glanced cynically at Igor, who was also staring at her husband. You don’t begin to understand Richard, nor do I, but I know
that
much. She swallowed hard against constriction in her throat. Like a lump of food which had stuck. Crazy, she said angrily to herself, and led the way to the garden room.

She paused at the foot of the long glass table to review the seating. There were places laid for ten, seven guests plus Lily and themselves. The usual number for a weekend party. Richard enjoyed hospitality and the use of his ancestral home which had been empty and decaying for so long.

On Richard’s right went Myra, of course; next to her, Igor; then Sue Blake, a dazzled, distant cousin from Kentucky. Sue was sixteen, she had long, taffy-colored hair, a piquant face devoid of make-up, and was inclined to bubble, either from nervousness or from genuine rapture at finding herself living “like a fairy tale,” as she kept saying. She came from a modest suburban home outside Louisville, and this was her first trip abroad.

Next to Sue, on Celia’s left she seated George Simpson. He was Richard’s London attorney, a small, middle-aged man with a squeaky voice which made everything he said slightly ridiculous. Between wrinkled lids his pale eyes shifted anxiously. His legal firm had served the Marsdons for three generations, but George Simpson had never before been invited as a house guest to Medfield Place.

Since Richard disliked London, and had a good deal of lingering business to attend to as a consequence of his father’s death, Celia had suggested that they ask Mr. and Mrs. Simpson. Richard—more flexible than his father—indifferently assented. “Though,” he had added, “I haven’t a clue what the wife’s like—I suppose Simpson
has
a wife. No matter, this weekend looks to be a mixed bag anyhow.”

Mixed enough, thought Celia, smiling at Lily and the Hindu doctor as she gestured them to their seats. Then, to balance off Myra there was the divorced Knight Sir Harry Jones, who had once been a Conservative M.P. for some place in Shropshire. He was handsome in a ruddy, jovial way and had a bold, admiring stare. Twenty-three years ago he had made a brilliant war record—Celia kept meaning to look him up in one of the stud books—but she was pleased, as were all hostesses, to have secured him as an extra man. He was in great demand. Myra’s presence had been the lure, though that he and Myra were lovers, as commonly reported, she felt to be unlikely. Myra treated Harry with light indifference. Just in case, however, Celia had allotted them adjoining guest rooms.

Celia started to sit down when she saw Richard’s slight inquiring frown, and realized that the seat on his left was vacant.

“Oh, dear—” she said to George Simpson. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize Mrs. Simpson wasn’t here. Is she still sick?”

George’s mouth twitched uncomfortably. “Edna was better this morning,” he said. “She told me she’d be down to lunch.”

Celia turned to the hovering Dodge. “Will you inquire after Mrs. Simpson?”

Dodge said, “Certainly, my lady,” while managing to convey distaste for his errand.

Celia was amused. She had months ago sensed the ratings given their guests in the servants’ quarters, and knew that the Simpsons had not passed muster, though they seemed inoffensive enough.

Edna Simpson had taken to her bed immediately upon arrival last night, pleading a sick headache. Celia’s sole impression had been of a stout, big-jawed woman with gold-rimmed spectacles and kinky sheep hair.

They all sat down at the glass table, and Celia waited politely for Dodge’s report before lifting her spoon to the chilled consommé.

There was a pause until Dodge reopened the door from the main house. Edna Simpson “made an entrance.” There was no other phrase for it. With slow and measured steps she preceded the butler, bowed towards Richard and Myra, then more casually towards Celia’s end of the table.

“Pardon me, I’m sure I had no notion of the taime.”

The men rose and Richard murmured inquiries about Edna’s health while he held her chair.

“Quaite, quaite recovered, thank you, Sir Richard. This luvely country air after smoggy Loondon.”

Heavens! Celia thought. Where does
she
come from? She did not recognize, as the English could, the North Country accent, curbed by a genteel effort to disguise it, but she flushed with entirely unnecessary embarrassment for Edna, who had dressed herself as she thought fitting to the occasion.

Edna wore a blue toque on her frizzled hair. Her blue lace gown stopped just below balloon-shaped knees. She wore dangling pearl earrings and a pearl choker. The entire outfit had cost George a pretty penny at Harrods, and Edna felt nothing but disdain for the others, lounging around half-naked in swim suits, beach robes and sandals. Drinking, too. The table was studded with glasses. This laxness was precisely what she had expected from the Americanized aristocracy. Her icy blue eyes peered quickly through the gold-rimmed spectacles. That
black
man, practically a nigger, seated next to her. Well! The Americans, naturally, wouldn’t have wits enough to realize how sensitive Englishwomen would feel about that. She stared at the Americans; at Sue Blake who should have been in the schoolroom instead of making eyes at that young dress designer. She stared at Lily Taylor, a woman of her own age, but bleached, painted and half-naked like the rest of them. All tarted up, thought Edna angrily. What an example to her daughter. She did not, however, look at Celia, or pause to examine the dislike she had felt for young Lady Marsdon upon first meeting her the night before. Edna did not permit herself sudden emotions, she had not noticed that the sick headache had come on when she met Celia and Sir Richard. Edna had a tonic for any discomforts which might plague her. It was contained in a plain quart bottle labeled “Bell’s Anodyne Tincture.” That this green fluid smelling of peppermint consisted of thirty percent alcohol was known only to her chemist, and would have horrified Edna who had joined the Temperance League at fourteen. The “tincture” had done its usual soothing work last night, and a few swigs had proved restorative this morning.

Edna daintily finished her consommé, put down her spoon and addressed Myra. “Such a luvely day, is it not, your grace—” She checked herself and quickly substituted, “Duchess.”

In anticipation of this visit, she had bought a book of etiquette and studied it with care. It seemed rude to address a duchess so baldly, but the book had been explicit on the point: “your grace” from inferiors, “Duchess” from equals.

Myra favored Edna Simpson with a leisurely stare, her full crimson lips quirked. “Perfect weather,” she agreed. “Mrs. Simpson, would you come from the North Country, by any chance?”

Edna turned a mottled red. “I did happen to be born in Yorkshire,” she said quickly. “My father was the—the rector of a small village on the moors, such a pretty little spot.”