The blast of anger was so sudden she threw her arms across her face as if to shield herself from a physical blow. With a sob she staggered back from the window as the pendant was torn from her neck. The chain disintegrated as the phoenix flew into the corner of the room and skittered under the chest of drawers. With a whimper of fear Vicky ran to the door and dragged it open. She fled down the passage into the living room and, slamming the door behind her she locked it. She was shaking violently.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured out loud. ‘I shouldn’t have put it on.’ Her cheeks were wet with tears. ‘We’ll take it back, I promise.’
She fell asleep at last on the sofa as dawn was breaking. In the garden a blackbird was singing, the notes clear and cold. Under the chest of drawers the phoenix lay on the dusty boards, a short length of golden chain beside it.
It was Saturday afternoon when the Porsche at last threaded its way the last few miles through the mountains. Giles glanced at Vicky. She was pale and tired and for the last hour she had been growing increasingly tense.
He reached across and put his hand over hers. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘How do we know we’re doing the right thing? How can we be sure that’s what he … she … it … wants?’
Giles shrugged. He removed his hand from hers to change gear as the car purred up towards the top of the pass. ‘You were the one who was so sure. If it isn’t then he, she or it will have to tell us. Anyway, I thought you said it was a he. Definitely a he.’ He smiled. ‘It seems to me that he is well able to make his feelings clear.’ She had told him what had happened. When he went back to the flat on Friday to collect her, the pendant was still lying on the floor; she hadn’t dared to touch it. Picking it up he had glanced round, nervously, waiting for something to happen. Nothing had. Wrapping it in tissue paper he packed it into a small box and put it in his pocket.
They paid their entrance fee, bought a guide book and began the walk across the field towards the grey stone ruins of the castle. The pendant was in Giles’s pocket.
‘There are a lot of people about,’ Vicky said nervously as she followed him through the gate.
He nodded. He had already spotted the triple windows high in the stone wall. ‘Look, that must be where they found it. In what used to be the chapel.’ He took her hand. Side by side they stood gazing up at the broken stone; at the remnants of once beautiful decoration. ‘It must have been wonderful, excavating this. Can you imagine it? All wild and broken and covered with grass, and camping out here in the storm.’ His hand had gone to his pocket. His fingers curled around the pendant.
‘There’s nowhere to put it, Giles.’ She looked round desperately. The restoration was immaculate. Short grass, gravel, newly mortared stone.
Giles was staring up at the windows again. They affected him strangely. Such grace and beauty; such a striving towards the sublime in a castle built for war. And they had survived, where the great curtain walls had fallen. ‘I wonder what really happened,’ he said. He moved forward and rested his hand on the cold granite of a door jamb. ‘Did she lose it? Was it stolen from her? Perhaps she was buried here in the chapel and the phoenix was buried with her.’
‘It doesn’t seem right to bury a phoenix,’ Vicky said softly. ‘A phoenix should die in the fire and then be reborn.’
‘You’re right.’ Suddenly Giles was businesslike. ‘We can’t hide it here. Not with all these people. We’ll come back tonight, when the castle is closed.’
‘How?’ Vicky’s eyes were enormous with doubt and disbelief and excitement.
‘We’ll climb over the fence. I have a feeling that whoever he was, he will show us what to do.’
There was a full moon. The broad strath and the distant mountains were silvered and silent as they climbed the fence and dropped into the field. Grazing sheep looked up startled as, hand in hand, they crept towards the castle.
Vicky’s shoes were soaked with dew as, half exhilarated, half terrified, she followed Giles towards the gate. Beyond it, within the ruined walls black pools of shadow contrasted sharply with the clear moonlight.
‘I’ll give you a leg up,’ Giles whispered. He bent so she could stand on his knee and vault across the padlocked gate. Following her he caught her hand again and they stood still.
‘Can’t you see the headlines?’ Vicky breathed in his ear. ‘Barrister arrested for breaking into Highland ruin for rendezvous with ghost.’
Giles smiled. He gave a quick glance over his shoulder. ‘No one is going to get arrested. We’re not doing any harm. Come on.’
He led the way between what remained of the gatehouse towers, then, keeping to the grass they crept towards the site of the chapel.
Inside the walls the air was icy cold; the shadows were thick. Vicky clutched Giles’s arm. ‘I’m scared.’
He stopped, looking up at the windows. ‘So am I.’
‘Have you got it?’
‘Of course.’ He touched the pendant in his inner pocket, then he reached for his torch.
‘Could we bury it under the grass?’ she whispered.
‘I was wondering that.’ He had brought a penknife. He could cut a turf and replace it so no one could see.
Slowly he walked towards the wall and ran his hands across the stone. It was cold and unyielding.
Behind him Vicky stood in the moonlight, staring round. Was he here, the jealous owner of the phoenix? Was she, the woman to whom he had given it?
‘Where are you?’ Her lips framed the words. ‘What do you want us to do with it?’ She shivered, remembering the touch of the unseen man’s hands on her body.
‘Can you smell burning?’ Giles whispered suddenly.
She could smell it too now. Not the gentle, autumn smell of woodsmoke. This was acrid. Unpleasant. The smell of dead fire, dowsed by water, and it was inside the walls.
Giles was peering into the shadows, directing the torch towards the corner. ‘Look. There’s a stair in the thickness of the stone. How odd. I don’t remember noticing that before.’ He tiptoed towards it and stood, his hand on the newel post, staring up into the darkness. Then he began to climb.
Wordlessly Vicky followed him up the tight spiral. It was pitch dark. They had to feel their way upward, following the narrow torch beam.
Ahead of Vicky Giles climbed steadily. She could hear his heavy breathing. Abruptly he stopped. She heard a gasp.
‘What is it?’ Behind him on the narrow stairway she could see nothing. The skin was prickling on the back of her neck.
‘Look.’ He stepped through a doorway and suddenly the stair above her was empty.
‘Giles. Wait!’ She sped up the last few steps.
The staircase led into a dark upper chamber. The smell of burning was unpleasantly strong up here and the floor was thick with debris. The pale beam of light from Giles’s torch showed fallen masonry and burned timbers, tumbled on stone. At the far end the three lancet windows rose up, close above them now, against the starlight. The torch beam picked out the details of the ravaged chapel – the breached, gaping walls, the collapsed roof open to the stars, the broken, exploded floor tiles, and beneath the windows a black gaping hole. Picking his way across the rubble Giles flashed the torch inside. ‘There’s something here.’ He reached down.
‘Be careful.’ On her knees beside him, Vicky peered into the hole.
‘There’s a little box down here. It’s half burned.’ Lifting it out he put it on the floor. ‘It must have been beautifully carved. You can just see the remnants of the decoration. What is it? Wood? Bone?’
‘It’s ivory.’ Awed, Vicky picked up the box. The lid was warped and twisted but she managed to prise it off. It was empty.
Their eyes met. Around them the shadows shifted. Beyond the windows in the moonlight an owl hooted. Taking the phoenix from his pocket Giles handed it to her. It was the first time she had touched it since it had been snatched from around her neck. Reverently she laid the pendant in the box. ‘It will be safe there,’ she said qu
ietly. She smiled. ‘He must have loved her so much.’
Putting back the lid, she gave the box to Giles, and he reached down and wedged it into the hole. Then carefully he began to fill it with rubble. On the top he balanced some of the broken tiles.
They stood for a moment in silence. ‘I hope you’re together, wherever you are.’ Giles’s quiet words hung for a moment in the air before he turned towards the stairway.
The moon was setting and the shadows had moved and thickened. On the grass below the lancet windows they stopped and stared upwards, but deep in the blackness of the wall there was no sign of the place where they had been.
‘Come on. I’m freezing.’ Giles reached for her hand. In his inside pocket was a small velvet box. In it was a locket, but suddenly the moment did not seem right. The shadows were too sad. Tomorrow, in the sunshine, he would bring her back and tell her he loved her and give it to her. Tomorrow, when, he knew, there would be no sign of the burnt chapel; no staircase in the wall. When grass and ruins would be as stark and neat as when they had first seen them earlier that afternoon.
When the Chestnut Blossoms Fall
A Trilogy
THE MISTRESS
It was winter outside. The restaurant was dimly lighted and they saw each other’s faces over the saucered candles as pale blurs, half dazzled against the flock wallpaper and the crowded, faded Victorian prints. A waiter hovered, a less substantial figure even than they, in the shadows with his coffee pot and the world-weary stoop to his shoulders.
‘More coffee, Tina?’ Derek smiled gently and she smiled back, hoping that he wasn’t going to reach into his pocket for his glasses to read the bill, a gesture which made him prematurely old.
She shook her head. ‘Let’s have it at my place, shall we?’
The spell was broken completely when he glanced at his watch. At once she felt a surge of resentment; always the watch came between them; always the time limit; the barrier, the gate through which he passed out of her life and back into someone else’s.
He had turned to the waiter. ‘No more coffee, thank you. The bill.’
The man bowed – the bill was already made up – and Derek fumbled for his glasses.
‘There’s just time to come back, Tina, I’d like that.’ He turned to her with a quick smile which never failed to win her back from her agonised depressions. Then he took her coat from the waiter, and helped her on with it, so his hands were already round her shoulders as they went out through the door and into the wet road and it was natural to stay like that as they trod the shiny reflections of the pavement lamps into muddy opacity and lowered their faces before the cold of the slanting rain.
She had left the fire on in her flat. Either way it helped – if he felt he had to go back to his wife it made the loneliness more bearable for Tina; if he didn’t, if he came back with her, it made the place inviting and homelike – his second home. She glanced up at him with a quick surge of warm happiness. This time he was there.
She threw off her coat and ran to the kitchen to find two cups, two saucers, two glasses for two people.
‘What would you like with the coffee, Derek?’ she called. He had lowered himself, by the fire, into the chair which she always thought of as his own.
‘Scotch if there’s any left. You know, Tina, we must do something about this room. Would you like me to buy you a new carpet? It might cheer it up a bit.’
She stopped, frozen in her tracks. He thought her room cheerless. He didn’t like it. Her hand shook a little as she began pouring again and her voice was guarded as she answered. ‘That would be nice. I should like that.’
At once he seemed aware of what was wrong, and he levered himself out of the chair and came to lean in the doorway of the kitchen, watching as she fixed the coffee. He took the Scotch from her hand. ‘I love the room, Tina. As it is. It’s comfortable. A haven, you know that. I just thought some more colour might cheer it up for you when I’m not here …’
So he did know how she felt. Of course; he was sensitive and that was why she loved him. One of the reasons. He was sensitive, warm, friendly, everything that that cow of a wife of his did not understand or appreciate.
Tina had never told him about the grey, aching evenings when he was not there. Or of the long empty nights; of the nervy solitary breakfast table when occasionally she would forget her promise to him to give up smoking and grab a cigarette with her black coffee instead of toast. She only told him about happy things, funny things, things which would bind him to her. She turned and smiled up at him. ‘You are à darling, Derek.’ She slipped her arms around his neck. A little of his Scotch spilled on her shoulder as she returned the hug and, smiling, he nuzzled it, pretending to lick where it had soaked darkly into the wool of her dress.
‘God, I wish I could stay tonight!’ Suddenly he was holding her in earnest. He felt blindly for the worktop behind her and, clumsily, set down the glass.
‘Why don’t you?’ she whispered. She knew he would shake his head. He would probably glance at his wrist over her shoulder and hurriedly calculate the time it would take to drive home.
‘Oh Derek!’ She pushed him away exasperated. ‘Ask her for a divorce. I can’t go on like this. I want you so much and it’s not as though she loves you – you’ve told me that.’
He had picked up his glass again, agitated as always when she touched on forbidden territory.
‘No. I said she doesn’t understand me, Tina, that’s different. She does love me, my dear. That’s the problem. That is why I can’t hurt her. She loves me very much.’
‘You can’t hurt her and yet you hurt me every day!’ She hated herself for saying it. She pushed past him and threw herself down on her knees before the fire in the dim light of the table lamp. ‘And she hurts you,’ she couldn’t resist adding over her shoulder as he remained in the kitchen doorway. ‘She knows how much you want a family, yet she refuses to give you any children. I should have thought that alone was grounds for divorce.’
‘Perhaps.’ He shook his head slowly as he came back to his chair. ‘It’s too soon, Tina. Perhaps eventually … I don’t know.’ He shrugged helplessly and sat there, gazing at the gently hissing flames in the elements.
‘And I want children so much,’ she went on piteously, half to herself. ‘Life is so terribly unfair.’
He didn’t answer. His eyes were still fixed on the fire. Perhaps he hadn’t even heard her.
‘Would you divorce her if I had a baby?’ She looked up suddenly. ‘You know, Derek, I think she would understand, if you told her that.’ But he was still looking blankly at the columns of blue flame, his eyes vacant, not listening.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
Visibly pulling himself together with an effort he focused on her again and smiled. ‘I am sorry I was miles away. What did you say?’ His face was haggard in the soft light.
She scrambled to her feet, her eyes shining from the idea which had at that moment been born, but her voice was gentle as she stood before him, gazing down into his eyes. ‘You’re tired.’
He nodded and slowly stood up. ‘Perhaps I had better go. It’s late and it’s a long drive.’
For once she did not try to stop him. She clung to him for the last, treasured, kiss of the night and then stood watching as he walked down the echoing hall outside the flat door. At the corner by the lift he stopped and turned for a second as he always did, then he was gone.
She closed the door and leaned with her back against it. Shutting her eyes she could feel her heart hammering inside her rib cage as, taking a deep breath, she went into the bedroom. She kept her contraceptive pills in the top drawer of the chest of drawers under the window. There were three packets there. It took as many minutes to carry them out to the rubbish bin.
As she clanged the lid shut on them she could feel her hands trembling and she was wiping her palms nervously on her dress as she walked back into the flat. She had made her decision; there was no going back. She picked up Derek�
�s bottle and poured herself a large drink. It was the first time she had ever done that alone.
Derek had promised to take her to the country at the weekend. It was bitterly cold and she sat beside him in the car hugging herself, smiling with excitement beneath her woollen hat.
‘What’s up? You look as though you’ve come into a fortune.’
She grinned happily at him. ‘I’m just happy, that’s all. Look at the frost on the trees, Derek. It’s so beautiful after being in town; one forgets.’ For once she did not even care that he lived in the country; that his house was probably decorated with hoarfrost even on weekdays and that his wife could see the snow on the boughs of their apple tree from her kitchen window.
They parked at the edge of the beechwoods and began slowly to walk through them, their shoes sinking into thawing leaf mould around ice-rimmed puddles, glancing up at the soaring silver trunks of the trees and the azure sky beyond. They held hands, his gloves leather, hers wool, and the smoke of their breath singled as they laughed. She wanted to run, but she was afraid to because he might remember he was so much older than she and pant and grow red in the face and say he was too old for that sort of thing and spoil it all.
They had tea in a little restaurant in front of a blazing log fire, asking for second helpings of scones and clotted cream and Derek looked at her and smiled. ‘It wouldn’t do you any harm to put on a little weight, sweetheart. You’re as thin as a bean pole.’
And she smiled back, and almost told him what she had done, but didn’t quite dare.
They seldom discussed Derek’s wife after that. Janet receded in importance as Tina’s happiness grew. She didn’t care any more what Janet did or thought. She had stopped worrying about her and thought only of what would happen when at last she could tell Derek that she was going to have his baby. She had no doubts about what he would do. She was utterly happy.
He bought the new carpet for her flat. It was deep red and over it there was a soft shaggy hearth rug for her to sit on because it was her favourite place – on her knees before the fire, reading or talking, or listening to music.
Distant Voices Page 27