by Anna Gilbert
Toria’s upbringing had been godly: she had never played a game of cards or dominoes, but she knew what happened when the pieces were stood on end and one of them fell. It might be safer not to interfere again – not yet. She would know when the time came.
CHAPTER XVIII
‘Beg pardon, ma’am.’ It was Bella nervously acting as parlour-maid while Jenny was at the dentist’s. ‘It’s Henderson. He’s asking for the master.’
‘Mr Rilston won’t want to be disturbed. What does Henderson want?’
‘It’s about a drainpipe, ma’am.’
‘Then Mr Rilston will be either in his study or in the summer-house.’
Mrs Rilston went to the window. From her sitting-room the summer-house was out of sight, screened from the north by trees. It was a timber building and stout enough to be wind-proof though hardly suitable for use at this time of the year even with the paraffin heater she had insisted on. But presently she saw Henderson limping across the garden in its direction. If not in his study Miles must be there.
She was worried about him. For the past three months he had been withdrawn, altogether uncompanionable. Meal-times had become constrained and awkward. If only Frederick were here! She wept a little. At the back of her mind was the thought that Miles’s mother had been subject to what was tactfully called depression: in fact, there had been times.… It had not been an inconsolable sorrow, though dreadfully sad of course, when typhoid fever carried her off. They had hoped that their son would marry again but it was not to be.
So far there had been nothing actually strange in Miles’s behaviour apart from his being so remote and unhappy. She had confided her anxiety to Mrs Grey who had agreed that he needed the company of younger people; it had also been agreed that if Linden could spare the time from her many engagements, she should come more often to Bainrigg.
‘It would be very good of her. I know she is popular and has many friends.’ She was indeed the very girl, one of their own sort, to take Miles out of himself.
Consequently, rarely a week passed without a visit from the Greys. Sometimes Linden came alone; a friend would drop her off for an hour or two and pick her up again. She would bring Mrs Rilston something from town – an altered dress, matching embroidery silks, a library book. Mrs Rilston grew accustomed to having her there and so presumably did Miles though he never sat with them, was certainly never alone with Linden, greeted her pleasantly on his way upstairs to his study or out into the grounds but never stopped to talk. It was understood that he was collecting material for an article or possibly a book, on ecclesiastic life in northern England in the Middle Ages.
‘So much work entailed,’ Mrs Rilston would explain helplessly, ‘but it gives him something to do and he is so very clever. Scholarly, you know.’ If only he would hunt or shoot! There had never been a Rilston who didn’t hunt or shoot.
At his table in the summer-house, Miles commanded a view of his own fields but more often his eyes rested on luminous clouds above distant hills, on the blaze of sunset, on a crescent moon. Before him a pile of unread books and a too-slim sheaf of notes served to remind him that in this sphere as in every other he was a failure: the article would never be finished, the book never written. There were days when he merely reread a few paragraphs written weeks ago without adding another word.
‘It’s about the main drainpipe, sir,’ Henderson explained. ‘It must have been fractured for quite a while. The damage first caught my eye when I came up from Ashlaw yesterday by the field path. I generally come in from the upper road, as you well know. I wondered why that ditch just outside the gate on the right-hand side was so wet, fairly brimming with water when there hasn’t been that much rain. And coming through the gate into the garden, that bit of ground by the shrubbery is all soft and squelchy, and it doesn’t smell too good.’
‘How does the pipe lie?’
‘So as to drain off at right-angles to that ditch and across Pennybit field to the main road.’
‘I’ll come and look. We’d better get the council people.’ It was an excuse to leave the causes of dispute between monks and lay brothers and to seem to be in charge of the estate.
Sure enough the ditch alongside the field nearest to the garden was water-logged and would probably remain so all winter. When Bella went home for her hour off that afternoon she found to her disgust that the path was ankle-deep in mud. Nobody had warned her. A good pair of shoes ruined!
‘I’m not going back that way.’ She had popped into the Judds’, hoping that Ewan would be there, but there was only Rob who would be joining his ship next day. ‘I’ll have to go along nearly to the farm and then up the far side of the field.’ She had to be back at four and spent most of her precious hour cleaning and polishing her shoes. ‘They say mud sticks and there was never a truer word.’
Visitors were coming to dinner: friends of Mr and Mrs Rilston who were staying in Elmdon on their way to Scotland and several other people, including Mrs and Miss Grey. ‘Needless to say.’
The dinner party passed off pleasantly. Mrs Rilston had been apprehensive: she had done so little entertaining since her husband’s death but the Fenwicks were old friends, the Gillings and Roberts were local people and the Greys could always be relied on, Mrs Grey a sympathetic listener and Linden quietly voicing unremarkable remarks, so that there was no disharmony. Gavin Roberts, a few years older than Miles, entertained them with tales of his adventures at the newly formed flying club at Howlyn.
‘Why don’t you join, Rilston? You’ve been up?’
‘Yes, two or three times.’
‘Flying’s definitely the thing from now on, especially with the new de Havilland DH60. It’s their latest, just out last year, with a welded steel fuselage. Come and have lessons. You’d get the hang of it in no time.’
‘So dangerous,’ Mrs Rilston protested.
‘Not at all. It’s almost monotonously safe, a jolly sight safer than going down a coal mine. You’re in a world of your own up there in the clouds. Seeing the earth beneath you, you get things into proportion. Problems seem less important. You wonder what you’ve been worrying about.’
‘Gavin has no problems,’ his wife said, ‘and very little to worry about.’
‘Not when I’m flying, dear.’
‘If ever there’s another war, which God forbid, aircraft are bound to play a bigger part,’ Mr Fenwick said. ‘There’s something to be said for building up a strong air force, just in case.’
‘Don’t even think of it on such a pleasant evening.’ Mrs Fenwick preferred to talk to Miles about Oxford where her grandson was an undergraduate. Had there been any lull in the conversation there would have remained the pleasure of looking at Linden in her autumn dinner gown of parchment velvet with gold lamé at the neck and wrists.
‘Are she and Miles ..?’ Mrs Fenwick whispered as the ladies went to the drawing-room.
‘I don’t really know. Perhaps not yet but I do hope.… It would be very suitable.’
Marriage would be his salvation. It would give him an aim in life. Drifting from day to day was the very worst thing for a young man of his temperament. She had thought at one time that Miles himself was disposed to marry. Only a few months ago he had been so much more cheerful and active than he had ever been before. Of course, Frederick’s death had been a great shock to him.
As for Miles, the duty to exert himself as host had at first been stimulating but as the evening wore on he relapsed into the dreamlike state that had become habitual. It was as if he moved alone against a background peopled by others with whom he felt no affinity: they were there, as the Greys often were, slightly more animated than the pictures on the wall but beyond his reach. Between himself and them no messages were interchanged from heart or mind. Half-a-dozen people substituted for those in the room would effect no change: he would barely notice the difference.
At ten o’clock the guests began to take leave. There was a general movement into the hall. They had their own cars. As a rule Chapm
an drove the Greys home though sometimes Miles took them in his own car so that Chapman need not leave his fireside again: he was getting on in years. On this occasion the Fenwicks naturally offered to take them.
‘How very kind!’ Marian Grey looked round. Miles and Mr Fenwick had already gone out; of Linden there was no sign: she had gone upstairs for her wrap and had not yet come down. ‘I should be delighted.’
‘Miles will drive Linden home.’ Mrs Rilston and Mrs Fenwick exchanged meaningful looks which Marian was careful not to notice.
Miles had gone out to see the guests off. His goodbyes were interrupted by a summons to the telephone to speak to his agent in Lancashire, who apologized for the lateness of his call and explained that he had that evening been in the company of a gentleman who had shown interest in Fothering Farm which was up for sale. Were there any special instructions if he should make an offer? It was good news.…
Miles was still at the telephone when Linden came slowly downstairs, wearing the white fur stole she had worn at Christmas. She smiled, with a little wave of her hand which he interpreted as a farewell. He nodded and gave his mind to the possible sale of Fothering Farm while Linden joined the Roberts and Gillings on the gravel sweep in front of the house.
‘Can we take you somewhere?’ The offer was polite but unenthusiastic. Both couples lived a few miles away in the opposite direction from Elmdon.
‘Thank you. I mustn’t trouble you. Miles will take me.’
She didn’t mind waiting on the drive. The night was cool, but after an evening indoors she found its freshness pleasant and walked up and down, admiring her kid evening shoes and occasionally looking in at the windows. Minutes passed. Her loitering took her further from the front drive, beyond the light from the hall, along the unlit eastern side of the long façade. At the corner she turned to look back. The sound of the cars was now distant. Moments later, Bainrigg was lapped in the deep silence of a country house at night. Beyond this point lay the gardens and beyond them empty fields shrouded in darkness. In her light dress and white fur she was the only creature visible, mothlike against the dense background of the shrubbery.
* * *
Miles hung up the receiver as his grandmother passed on her way upstairs.
‘You are taking Linden, aren’t you?’
‘Good Lord! Is she waiting?’
In the drawing-room, coffee cups and glasses had been removed and all the lamps but one switched off. He glanced into the other downstairs rooms and ran down the steps. The drive was empty of guests and cars. He went indoors.
‘She must have gone with the Fenwicks.’
‘Then I’ll say goodnight, dear. Don’t stay up too late.’
Miles went back to the drawing-room. He put logs on the fire, a record on the gramophone and lay back to listen. It was one of Chopin’s nocturnes, No 8 in D flat major, his favourite. The limpid notes seemed to convey both the memory of lost happiness and yearning for its return. His mood was passive. Fate was unalterable: there was nothing he could do but bow to its implacable and arbitrary decrees. He entertained such thoughts but knew them to be self-indulgent and unsound. He genuinely suffered, but perhaps in the very depths of his being he felt, slight and ineffectual as a candle in a vault, a melancholy pride in his graceful acceptance of rejection, forgetting that what is never offered cannot be rejected.
He moved only to lift the needle when the gentle sounds ceased and to switch off the lamp, then lay back again, thinking of Margot. She had gone from him, become a half-forgotten dream, a beloved memory.… An hour passed and another. The silver chime of the French clock on the mantelpiece roused him. He must have slept. It was past midnight; the logs had burnt to white ash and the room was almost dark. Between sleep and waking he was vaguely troubled. Having thought of Margot, he had dreamed of her and in trying to recall the dream he was aware that it was not only the chiming clock that had roused him. Turning sharply, he saw a movement at one of the long windows. There was someone outside, a pale figure against the outer dark, a wraith pleading to come in.
His head cleared. It was no phantom but a woman leaning against the window. She raised her arm and tapped on the pane. He sprang to his feet.
‘Linden!’ He pushed open the window, put his arm round her, lifted her over the low sill, switched on a light – and was flabbergasted.
‘Oh Miles. Thank God you’re here.’ She cringed, barely recognizable, shivering, dishevelled, cheeks streaked with mud and tears, one shoe gone, the velvet dress spattered and evil-smelling. In one limp hand she held the white fur stole, now wet with slime and earth-grey like the pelt of an animal drowned in mud. ‘I would have died if anyone else had seen me. You’ll help me.’ She burst into tears.
‘Come to the fire. Tell me – how has this happened? Where have you been all this time?’
Immaculate, elegant, poised, self-contained, she had made no impression on him at all. But now he was genuinely distressed for her. His heart warmed to her as it would to a stray kitten or a lost lamb.
‘I had to wait. I waited in the summer-house until all the lights were out. Until they’d all gone to bed. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bear to let anyone see me like this and I would have stayed there all night, but it was so cold – and what would I have done in the morning?’
She had ventured out of the summer-house and had seen the faint light of the dying fire in the drawing-room, she told him, sobs shaking her slim body.
Disregarding the state of her clothes, he put his arm round her and stroked her wildly ruffled wet hair, his hands tender and comforting. She clung to him, ruining the corded silk lapels of his dinner jacket with her tears and muddied sleeves. He put her in a low-chair, replenished the fire, rubbed her numb fingers.
There were two men, she told him. They had come out of the shrubbery. No, she hadn’t seen their faces: they had something on their heads so she hadn’t really seen them at all. She thought they meant to kill her but no, they had not hurt her. They had hustled her through the gate into the field. One of them had pulled off her fur and thrown it into the ditch, a sort of pool of muddy water. She couldn’t see it – it was too dark – but she could feel the mud under her feet and there was a horrid smell. Then suddenly, still without speaking a word, they had gone. She heard them running down the path, towards the bottom of the field.
She slid from the chair and crouched nearer to the fire, shuddering. It was an outrage – and on his own land. He had never been so angry or so deeply stirred to pity. Such compassion as he would naturally have felt for any creature ill-treated had never yet been roused by human need. To see the victim actually here at his feet, a girl entitled to his protection, a guest in his own house reduced to such a state; to see her tears and feel the softness of her cold hands; to be near enough to take her in his arms and stroke her hair; to burn with anger and the compulsion to help and comfort her – together roused in him a spirit altogether unfamiliar. Her very nearness was a revelation. The mud and tears and the pathetic small foot without a shoe moved him as no glamour could have done, and because he felt her weakness and dependence on him, he felt too his own contrasting strength. This was a situation he must – and could – handle.
‘You must have something hot.’ He went swiftly to the kitchen. The fire there was never out; a kettle was still warm. He brewed a stiff rum toddy. Her hand shook so violently that he had to hold her and guide the mug to her lips.
‘They were not Ashlaw men,’ he assured her. ‘None of the local men would dare do such a thing – or want to. They may have come from Fellside. I believe they have a rough lot there. It’s probably too late to catch them but I’m going to ring the police.’
‘But they didn’t take anything.’ She indicated the gold chain at her neck, the gold bracelet on her wrist. ‘And they could have done. Please, you mustn’t ring the police. I can’t bear to have it known. I feel so humiliated. If I thought people knew about it I could never come here again.’ Tears hung on her long lashes; her
look of defeat was touching. His anger revived, but he understood that it would be folly to risk waking the servants, or worse still, his grandmother.
Linden drank the rum but went on shuddering as if she would never be warm again.
‘You’ll have to get out of those clothes. I’ll find something warm for you to put on and then I’ll take you home.’
‘You’re wonderful,’ she said. ‘I’m so relieved and grateful that I could come to you for help. Just to have you here.…’ The tears spilled.
If she had stayed out there much longer she might have died of cold. Even now she might go down with pneumonia not to mention the shock to the poor girl’s nerves. He brought the copper hot-water jug from his room, a sponge and towel, and gently washed her face.
‘There, that’s better.’ The words and manner came instinctively from the forgotten world of childhood.
Back in his room he found sweaters, a warm singlet, the long socks he wore with plus-fours, a dressing gown and travelling rug. When he went down she had struggled out of her dress and was taking off her stockings. ‘Look. They’re ruined.’ She pushed away the unsightly pile of garments and once again dissolved into tears.
‘They can be replaced. I’ll see to that – and your fur.’ No one had ever called him wonderful before. ‘What happened to your shoe?’
‘It must still be there in the ditch. When they’d gone I tried to reach my fur and I fell.…’
‘Here, put these on. I’ll help you.’
She stretched out a slim white leg. He knelt to ease the coarse sock on to her small foot, looked up, smiling at the incongruity and saw that she was beautiful, her eyes pleading and unhappy. Lovely and lost. The phrase pleased him. Lovely and lost and needing him. He drew her to her feet to pull the warm garments over her head, covering her bare flesh. It seemed quite natural to take her in his arms to kiss and console her. It was hard to let her go when she drew away.