by Anna Gilbert
‘She’s out. She’s gone down to the village.’
‘We’ll leave her a note. You go and change your shoes.’
She pencilled a note on a leaf from her pocket diary and put it on the kitchen table. Rosie ran upstairs and came back without the beads, the lace curtain and the mob-cap and in her own shoes. They set off hand in hand, ducked through a gap in the hedge in Lucknow meadow and became friends.
‘What did you mother say when you found the beads?’
‘I didn’t tell her.’
‘It was a secret?’
‘For my treasure box.’ There were other things in it: a ring from a lucky potato, a gold buckle, half a china lady (the top half), the lid of a tin with a ship on it.… Margot was interested, remembering a similar hoard.
‘You like dressing up?’
‘When I’m by myself and there’s nobody to play with.’
They skirted the meadow, which sloped in the direction of the village, adjoining on its further side the long back gardens of houses in Ashlaw’s main street.
‘I was looking for mushrooms. You have to pick them early in the morning. There weren’t any but there were some apples. They’d fallen off that tree. I only picked them up, else they’d have been wasted.’ She pointed to an apple tree, its branches leaning out over a garden wall. In the unmown grass by the wall there were windfalls, half eaten by rats or pecked by birds. ‘And while I was picking them up I saw the beads. Here.’ She parted the leaves of a clump of ragwort by a narrow iron gate.
Margot looked over it into an old-fashioned garden and recognized it. The strawberry bed was at the bottom of the slope where it just escaped the shadow of the house and shop.
‘It wasn’t stealing, was it? They were getting spoilt, lying there. They could have been there a long time, getting rained on.’
‘It wasn’t stealing. Run home and tell your mother I’ll come and see her another day.’ A silver sixpence changed hands. Enraptured, Rosie ran off, stopping three times to wave before she disappeared through the hedge. It had been a very special day.
For Margot too. The beads were Miss Burdon’s. It was highly unlikely that another identical string could have found its way to the gate at the top of her garden. Whoever stole them had dropped or deliberately left them. On the other hand – she shrank from a discovery so momentous – to imagine that Linden, immaculate in white, would be induced to scramble through a hedge rife with sticky-jacks and nettles into a pathless field, was ludicrous – as ludicrous as to imagine that having stolen the beads, she would make so bizarre and half-hearted an attempt to return them. One could believe that she might steal, and worse – much worse – but she would never risk spoiling her clothes. In any case, Linden, who never strayed from well-trodden paths, not in any sense, would neither know that Miss Burdon had a gate opening on a field nor how to reach it. If it was the thief who left the beads among the ragwort, the thief was not Linden.
Sheer dismay brought Margot literally to her knees. She sank down on the grass, gripping the bars of the gate for support. To her shame, she was disappointed. She wanted it to be Linden. She wanted to blame her for all that had gone awry. With an additional pang she remembered that she had told Alex that Linden had stolen the beads, and it wasn’t true. Oh yes, she wanted desperately to see the flaking beads as a symbol of baseness beneath a glittering surface, to identify their falseness with Linden’s.
And sadder still – she had been quick to believe that Katie had not taken the beads. But she must have done. She might have made a confused attempt to return them. Could she in her flight from the shop have hidden them in Church Lane, retrieved them (though dazed with fright), found her way to the back of Miss Burdon’s garden and dropped them by her gate? It seemed unlikely that she would associate this gate, if she knew of it, with the shop in the main street. The whole enterprise, weird as it was, seemed too rational to be Katie’s.
Her forehead on the iron bars, Margot saw between them the long slope of the garden; at the bottom, beyond the strawberry bed, the flagged path outside the scullery door and, further along, another door giving entry to the back shop. That had been Toria’s territory. With relief she remembered that Toria had actually seen Linden take the beads. Her own assumption that Linden was to blame had rested on Toria’s word.
Margot turned her face from the warm sun but it could not dispel the shock that set her shivering nor free her from the sensation of being plunged into sudden darkness. Suppose Toria had lied: the lie all the more convincing because part of her story was true? She could have stepped into the shop to rest for a few minutes in the shade and stand motionless among the bales of flannelette sheeting. She could have seen Katie come and go, leaving the shop empty. And then a few long strides would take her to the counter to snatch the beads, take them up the garden, drop them over the gate and come back to clean the scullery window, unnoticed, ignored, despised and rejected – the words would have been familiar to her – having doomed Katie to death and altered several lives.
But why? To incriminate Linden. ‘The only comfort I’ve had is knowing that I could ruin her’, she had said; and later, only a few hours ago, ‘There’s no punishment worse than to be put to shame for something you didn’t do’. The similarity between events in Oxcote and in Ashlaw was now more striking. Perhaps in seeking to humiliate Linden for an earlier offence, Toria had drawn on her own experience, cherishing her secret for use when the time came.
To Margot, so intense a hatred seemed as crazy as Katie’s fear, or for that matter, though briefly, as Alex’s love. There was something about Linden that had a disturbing effect on others. Were there really people who served as instruments of evil like the witches of old, through no choice of their own? Such a person would be distinctive, in some way different. Linden had always been different. It was her difference that had intrigued the girls at school, including, more than most, herself. It was an uncomfortable thought.
Which of the three had taken the beads? Linden because she wanted them: Toria because she wanted to ruin Linden: Katie who wanted nothing in her entire life except to be safe?
Walking home through Priory Wood, Margot came to a decision. For her the incident was closed. Somehow she must put it from her mind. The questions it raised must remain unanswered. Nothing could be done without reviving unhappiness, and causing more. The homely fields were now haunted, so that a little girl gathering mushrooms in the early light became a ghost, and unimaginably strange things were being said in the village. People whose lives were drab and dangerous were surely entitled to enrich them by telling stories of weird happenings in their own countryside. It had always been so. The stories would last for a while: they would change in the telling and in time there would be no one left who knew how they began.
When she closed her curtains that night, Toria had not come back. The next day brought no sign of her. But on the third day she was heard in the woodshed, stacking logs as if she had never left off. She was best left alone. While engaged in so blameless an occupation, Margot thought with dawning cynicism, even Toria could do no harm – though with Toria one could never tell. A quiet woman who came down her crooked stair at dawn to kindle fire in the cold grate and climbed at nightfall to her narrow room, she had made the Hall her dwelling place and had become part of it.
She herself must find something else to think about – something absorbing and of an entirely different kind. In this she was to be, almost at once, completely successful.
CHAPTER XXV
Her father arrived home the next day. On the morning he left, he had heard news in Elmdon which made him cut short the conference in Derbyshire. His old enemy Bedlow had died.
‘Yes, the old blackguard has gone. It’s strange, Margot, but I shall miss him. Couldn’t stand the man, but his going leaves a gap. He was like no one else – and a good thing too, but he had guts and the tenacity of a bloodhound. The funeral is tomorrow. Could you take a look at my things, black tie and so on?’
‘
You’re going to the funeral?’
‘It’s the least I can do, not to let enmity go beyond the grave.’
Margot got out and brushed the funeral trappings and saw him off the next morning. Her surprise at his unexpected respect for the old monster was nothing to her amazement at the news he brought back late in the afternoon. She had gone out to meet him as he got out of the car.
‘I can’t get over it. You won’t believe this. All these years and I had absolutely no idea.’ He had dropped his hat on the ground and was staring at it absent-mindedly. Margot picked it up. ‘Of course there was no reason why we should have known. The situation had existed for years before we came to this district.’
‘Father! Tell me what has happened. I command you.’
‘Well, wait till you hear. Let’s go inside. We’d better sit down. It concerns you too in a way.’
‘Then it isn’t to do with old Bedlow?’ It was disrespectful now that he was dead but she had never heard him spoken of in any other way.
‘Oh, but it is. Very much so.’
She marched him into the sitting-room and sat him down.
‘Now. Tell.’
‘I could do with a cup of tea, by the way.’
‘Not until.…’
‘Right. The fact is that Bedlow is – or was – Lance’s grandfather.’
‘But.…’
‘Yes. He has a grandfather in Berwick, but people have two grandfathers.’
‘His mother’s father!’
‘He fell out with his daughter when she married. No one knows why. Nothing unusual about that: he fell out with everybody. That’s why I’m glad I went to the funeral: considering how well known he was, there weren’t many people there. Quinian of course, and Andrews. Laverborne was otherwise engaged, needless to say. It was a surprise to see the Pelmans. We left the cemetery together. Pelman had to go to a case but Lance told me all about it. There had been no contact between his father and grandfather since his mother’s funeral, but Lance has been looking after him during his illness. He’s coming this evening, by the way.’
The tea was refreshing. He wondered as she refilled his cup why Margot should be so pleased that Bedlow was Lance’s grandfather. She seemed quite captivated by the idea – and how like her mother she was. Sarah’s eyes had lit up in the same way when he first told her that he loved her. Mother and daughter had the same capacity for unalloyed happiness. It was a long time since he had seen Margot smiling to herself. The months of sunshine with Jane Bondless had done her good.
His own mood was pensive. The funeral had marked the end of an epoch. His contests with Bedlow had been fought with vigour. The antagonists had come from opposite corners of the ring with the glint of battle in their eyes, equal in determination and with the same inability to deal the knock-out blow. Remembering their set-to about the chimney, he saw it in a new light. Bedlow’s offensive remarks about ‘your lad’ were those of a grandfather whose own lad’s picture had not appeared in the newspaper. He was entitled to feel annoyed. Well, he was gone; and he himself was tired, his confidence shaken. Sarah would have understood.
‘I’ll go up and change,’ he said, ‘and perhaps have forty winks.’
He had scarcely gone when she heard the car and rushed to the window. Almost at once Lance was in the room. In all the years as they grew up together they had never been alone in this special kind of way, so that she saw him afresh as if for the first time – yet with the familiarity of all that was dear in their shared lives. He was a distinguished-looking man – Jane was right – with an air of summing up situations and knowing how to deal with them, especially this one.
‘Lance! I’m so glad … but sorry to hear about your grandfather.’
‘I can see how sorry you are. You’re positively beaming.’ He came nearer. ‘Thank God you haven’t changed. You always did blurt things out and then wish you hadn’t. Let me look at you.’ He took her hands and drew her closer, well pleased with what he saw.
‘You’ve been a long time in coming to look at me.… I was rather hurt. But I didn’t know about your grandfather’s illness – or even about your grandfather. Father thought you might be in love with a girl in Elmdon when you spent so much time there. Oh, I’m sorry!’ Dreadful thought: the existence of an ailing grandfather need not preclude that of an attractive girl.
‘Are there any girls in Elmdon?’ His voice was tender. He drew her closer still and stroked her hair. ‘Dearest Meg.’ He gently touched her cheek. ‘You must know, there’s no one but you.’
‘I didn’t know. How could I?’
‘You’ve had long enough to find out. I’ve loved you since you were six – or earlier – since long before I knew the meaning of the word.’
‘You never said.…’
‘I’m saying it now. I’ve always loved you. The condition is serious, incurable, life-long, terminal.’
‘It’s such a comfort to be loved by a doctor. In that grisly kind of way.’
‘Being without you is certainly like an illness. This last year has been the worst I’ve lived through, though the year before that was pretty bad.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t bring this up when I was six. I wouldn’t have felt so marvellously happy now if I’d known for years.’ To be held close in his arms was like the homecoming after a difficult journey. ‘I’ve been rather slow in realizing how much I need you, now more than ever.’
‘You’ve got over Miles?’
‘It was a sad dream.’ She moved away. ‘A strange sad interval, never quite real. It could never have been like this. But how blessed I’ve been. Both of you so good.’
‘It seemed only too real to me.’ He joined her on the window-seat. ‘He had all the qualities I haven’t got. Most important, charm. Miles had it, and Alex. You’d better face up to it: I have no charm.’
‘You don’t need it, whatever it is.’ He seemed to her almost – in fact, quite perfect. She must have been blind all these years. ‘What is it exactly?’
‘How should I know? Charm is indescribable.’
‘If you did know, you’d take it up seriously and make a thorough study of it. I wouldn’t see you for months, perhaps years. I couldn’t bear it. As a matter of fact’ – she became serious herself – ‘being charmed and spellbound can actually happen to people, not only in fairy tales.’
‘You’ve experienced it?’
‘I’ll tell you sometime. I have so much to tell you.’
There would be plenty of time. She was no longer restless. Her love, the natural flowering of an early affection into delight in his tenderness, his kiss, his understanding, had already distanced the distress of recent years. They went out into the garden. All very well to be wary of witchcraft but the evening was enchanted; in its softened light the Hall resumed its rightful air of picturesque antiquity. The garden was flower-scented. The whole world had changed.
‘I’ve waited for this so long,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t tell you sooner, that you’re all the world to me, I mean. When your family came to Monk’s Dene it was as if a new life began. I can just about remember how my father and I grubbed along before that. Your people were so good to me that I was always scared stiff of doing anything to upset them. It would have been overstepping the mark to try to monopolize their daughter. But it was tough – having to watch you fall in love with someone else.’
‘I promise never to do it again.’
Would she have been so happy now in Lance’s arms, so deeply content, if she had not known the anguish of the earlier love? There seemed nothing more to wish for in the present hour, their first together, as the flush of sunset faded and the harvest moon appeared. They talked, were silent, talked again.
‘Tell me about your unknown grandfather.’
‘It was an odd business. I soon cottoned on to the fact that he was the enemy in your father’s battles with the company. I couldn’t remember ever having seen him so it was easy to keep quiet about him. No need to warn my father to do the same:
he never mentioned him.’
‘But you became friends?’
‘He suddenly surfaced at the time of Katie’s death. He’d read about it in the Gazette and seen my name – and came up with the offer to pay all my medical fees, board and lodgings. Naturally I went to see him. We got on rather well. My mother was barely mentioned. Heaven knows what had gone wrong. I think he felt more than he was capable of expressing. Communication was one of the things he hadn’t learned.’
In the old man’s last days they had become closer.
‘I have something to confess,’ Lance said. ‘But first, can you give me your solemn word that you love me for my own sake and for no other reason?’
‘No matter what the confession is about?’
‘That’s the whole point. No matter what.’
‘It’s a fearful risk but you have my solemn word.’
‘It’s embarrassing. I haven’t yet got used to the idea. The fact is – I’m going to be alarmingly rich. The old man has left me everything: stocks and shares, investments in coal, iron, steel, railways, shipping, rows of houses. I may be exaggerating but there’s an awful lot of it. You’re laughing at me but it’s been a shock, I can tell you.’
‘Never mind.’ Margot kissed him again. ‘It’s a disability you can’t help. We must put up with it. For some women your wealth might even make up for your lack of charm.’
‘You’re taking it well – and it certainly will transform the practice. We’ll be able to take on an assistant – and a dispenser – and make life easier for the district nurse. And that’s just a start. I’ve been lucky,’ he added solemnly. ‘If my grandfather had died sooner I might have attracted the attention of Linden. Even now I don’t feel safe.’
But the Greys, he thought, had left Gordon Street and possibly the district. The only intruder was Edward who came quietly down the path to the alcove in the balustrade where they sat.
‘When I see a man with his arm round my only daughter, I am bound to ask his intentions.’ Lance blushed and got to his feet. Margot drew her father to the empty place: his voice had been husky. ‘Your mother would have been overjoyed. It was her dearest wish, years and years ago. You were like a son to her, Lance, and to me.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And even if I’d known who your grandfather was, it wouldn’t have made a ha’porth of difference. If you stick to your guns as well as he did, you’ll not do too badly. At any rate, I’m glad you’ve both come to your senses at last.’