The Ivy Tree

by Mary Stewart

  THE IVY TREE

  Mary Stewart

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 1961 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  This edition 2011

  Copyright © Mary Stewart 1961

  The right of Mary Stewart to be identified as the Author of the Work has been

  asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real

  persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  Epub ISBN: 9781444720471

  Book ISBN: 9781444720464

  Hodder and Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Fredith and Thomas Kemp

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  Also by Mary Stewart

  A north country maid up to London had stray’d,

  Although with her nature it did not agree;

  She wept, and she sighed, and she bitterly cried:

  ‘I wish once again in the north I could be!

  Oh! the oak and the ash, and the bonny ivy tree,

  They flourish at home in the North Country.

  ‘No doubt, did I please, I could marry with ease;

  Where maidens are fair many lovers will come:

  But he who I wed must be North Country bred,

  And carry me back to my North Country home.

  Oh! the oak and the ash, and the bonny ivy tree,

  They flourish at home in my own country.’

  Seventeenth Century Traditional

  1

  Come you not from Newcastle?

  Come you not there away?

  Oh, met you not my true love?

  Traditional.

  I might have been alone in a painted landscape. The sky was still and blue, and the high cauliflower clouds over towards the south seemed to hang without movement. Against their curded bases the fells curved and folded, blue foothills of the Pennines giving way to the misty green of pasture, where, small in the distance as hedge-parsley, trees showed in the folded valleys, symbols, perhaps, of houses and farms. But in all that windless, wide landscape, I could see no sign of man’s hand, except the lines – as old as the ridge-and-furrow of the pasture below me – of the dry stone walls, and the arrogant stride of the great Wall which Hadrian had driven across Northumberland, nearly two thousand years ago.

  The blocks of the Roman-cut stone were warm against my back. Where I sat, the Wall ran high along a ridge. To the right, the cliff fell sheer away to water, the long reach of Crag Lough, now quiet as glass in the sun. To the left, the sweeping, magnificent view to the Pennines. Ahead of me, ridge after ridge, running west, with the Wall cresting each curve like a stallion’s mane.

  There was a sycamore in the gully just below me. Some stray current of air rustled its leaves, momentarily, with a sound like rain. Two lambs, their mother astray somewhere not far away, were sleeping, closely cuddled together, in the warm May sunshine. They had watched me for a time, but I sat there without moving, except for the hand that lifted the cigarette to my mouth, and after a while the two heads went down again to the warm grass, and they slept.

  I sat in the sun, and thought. Nothing definite, but if I had been asked to define my thoughts they would all have come to one word. England. This turf, this sky, the heartsease in the grass; the old lines of ridge-and-furrow, and the still older ghosts of Roman road and Wall; the ordered, spare beauty of the northern fells; this, at my feet now, was England. This little world. This other Eden, demi-paradise . . .

  It was lonely enough, certainly. We had it to ourselves, I and the lambs, and the curlew away up above, and the fritillaries that flickered like amber sparks over the spring grasses. I might have been the first and only woman in it; Eve, sitting there in the sunlight and dreaming of Adam . . .

  ‘Annabel!’

  He spoke from behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach. He must have come quietly along the turf to the south of the Wall, with his dog trotting gently at heel. He was less than four yards from me when I whirled round, my cigarette flying from startled fingers down among the wild thyme and yellow cinquefoil that furred the lower courses of the Roman stones.

  Dimly I was aware that the lambs had bolted, crying.

  The man who had shattered the dream had stopped two yards from me. Not Adam; just a young man in shabby, serviceable country tweeds. He was tall, and slenderly built, with that whippy look to him that told you he would be an ugly customer in a fight – and with something else about him that made it sufficiently obvious that he would not need much excuse to join any fight that was going. Possibly it is a look that is inbred with the Irish, for there could be no doubt about this young man’s ancestry. He had the almost excessive good looks of a certain type of Irishman, black hair, eyes of startling blue, and charm in the long, mobile mouth. His skin was fair, but had acquired that hard tan which is the result of weathering rather than of sunburn, and which would, in another twenty years, carve his face into a handsome mask of oak. He had a stick in one hand, and a collie hung watchfully at his heels, a beautiful creature with the same kind of springy, rapier grace as the master, and the same air of self-confident good breeding.

  Not Adam, no, this intruder into my demi-Eden. But quite possibly the serpent. He was looking just about as friendly and as safe as a black mamba.

  He took in his breath in a long sound that might even have been described as a hiss.

  ‘So it is you! I thought I couldn’t be mistaken! It is you . . . The old man always insisted you couldn’t be dead, and that you’d come back one day . . . and by God, who’d have thought he was right?’

  He was speaking quite softly, but just what was underlying that very pleasant voice I can’t quite describe. The dog heard it, too. It would be too much to say that its hackles lifted, but I saw its ears flatten momentarily, as it rolled him an upward, white-eyed look, and the thick collie-ruff stirred on its neck.

  I hadn’t moved. I must have sat there, dumb and stiff as the stones themselves, gaping up at the man. I did open my mouth to say something, but the quiet, angry voice swept on, edged now with what sounded (fantastic though it should have seemed on that lovely afternoon) like danger.

  ‘And what have you come back for? Tell me that! Just what do you propose to do? Walk straight home and hang up your hat? Because if that’s the idea, my girl, you can think again, and fast! It’s not your grandfather you’ll be dealing with now, you know, it’s me . . . I’m in charge, sweetheart, and I’m staying that way. So be warned.’

  I
did manage to speak then. In face of whatever strong emotion was burning the air between us, anything that I could think of to say could hardly fail to sound absurd. What I achieved at last, in a feeble sort of croak that sounded half paralysed with fright was merely: ‘I – I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I saw you get off the bus at Chollerford.’ He was breathing hard, and the fine nostrils were white and pinched looking. ‘I don’t know where you’d been – I suppose you’d been down at Whitescar, blast you. You got on the Housesteads bus, and I followed you. I didn’t want you to recognise me coming up the field, so I waited to let you get right up here, because I wanted to talk to you. Alone.’

  At the final word, with its deliberately lingering emphasis, something must have shown in my face. I saw a flash of satisfaction pass over his. I was scared, and the fact pleased him.

  Something, some prick of humiliation perhaps, passing for courage, helped me to pull myself together.

  I said, abruptly, and a good deal too loudly: ‘Look, you’re making a mistake! I don’t—’

  ‘Mistake? Don’t try and give me that!’ He made a slight movement that managed to convey – his body was as eloquent as his face – a menace as genuine and as startling as his next words. ‘You’ve got a nerve, you bitch, haven’t you? After all these years . . . walking back as calm as you please, and in broad daylight! Well, here am I, too . . .’ His teeth showed. ‘It doesn’t necessarily have to be midnight, does it, when you and I go walking at the edge of a cliff with water at the bottom? Remember? You’d never have come mooning up here alone, would you, darling, if you’d known I was coming too?’

  This brought me to my feet, really frightened now. It was no longer imagination to think that he looked thoroughly dangerous. His astounding good looks, oddly enough, helped the impression. They gave him a touch of the theatrical which made violence and even tragedy part of the acceptable pattern of action.

  I remember how steep, suddenly, the cliff looked, dropping sharply away within feet of me. At its foot Crag Lough stirred and gleamed under some stray breeze, like a sheet of blown nylon. It looked a long way down.

  He took a step towards me. I saw his knuckles whiten round the heavy stick. For a mad moment I thought I would turn and run; but there was the steep broken slope behind me, and the Wall at my right, and, on the left, the sheer cliff to the water. And there was the dog.

  He was saying sharply, and I knew the question mattered: ‘Had you been down to the farm already? To Whitescar? Had you?’

  This was absurd. It had to be stopped. Somehow I managed to grab at the fraying edges of panic. I found my senses, and my voice. I said flatly, and much too loudly: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t know you! I told you you’d made a mistake, and as far as I’m concerned you’re also behaving like a dangerous lunatic! I’ve no idea who you think you’re talking to, but I never saw you before in my life!’

  He hadn’t been moving, but the effect was as if I’d stopped him with a charge of shot. Where I had been sitting I had been half turned away from him. As I rose I had turned to face him, and was standing now only two paces from him. I saw his eyes widen in startled disbelief, then, at the sound of my voice, a sort of flicker of uncertainty went across his face, taking the anger out of it, and with the anger, the menace.

  I followed up my advantage. I said, rudely, because I had been frightened, and so felt foolish: ‘And now will you please go away and leave me alone?’

  He didn’t move. He stood there staring, then said, still in that edged, angry tone that was somehow smudged by doubt: ‘Are you trying to pretend that you don’t recognise me? I’m your cousin Con.’

  ‘I told you I didn’t. I never saw you in my life. And I never had a cousin Con.’ I took a deep, steadying breath. ‘It seems I’m lucky in that. You must be a very happy and united family. But you’ll excuse me if I don’t stay to get to know you better. Goodbye.’

  ‘Look, just a minute – no, please, don’t go! I’m most terribly sorry if I’ve made a mistake! But, really—’ He was still standing squarely in the path which would take me back to the farm track, and the main road. The cliff was still sheer to one side, and the water, far below us, smooth once more, glassed the unruffled sky. But what had seemed to be a dramatic symbol of menace towering between me and freedom, had dwindled now simply into a nice-looking young man standing in the sunshine, with doubt melting on his face into horrified apology.

  ‘I really am most desperately sorry! I must have frightened you. Good God, what on earth can you think of me? You must have thought I was crazy or something. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I, well, I thought you were someone I used to know.’

  I said, very drily: ‘I rather gathered that.’

  ‘Look, please don’t be angry. I admit you’ve every right, but really – I mean, it’s pretty remarkable. You could be her, you really could. Even now that I see you closely . . . oh, perhaps there are differences, when one comes to look for them, but – well, I could still swear—’

  He stopped abruptly. He was still breathing rather fast. It was plain that he had indeed suffered a considerable shock. And, for all his apology, he was still staring at me as though he found it difficult to believe me against the evidence of his eyes.

  I said: ‘And I’ll swear too, if you like. I don’t know you. I never did. My name isn’t Annabel, it’s Mary. Mary Grey. And I’ve never even been to this part of the world before.’

  ‘You’re American, aren’t you. Your voice. It’s very slight, but—’

  ‘Canadian.’

  He said slowly: ‘She went to the States . . .’

  I said violently and angrily: ‘Now, look here—’

  ‘No, please, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it!’ He smiled then, for the first time. The charm was beginning to surface, now, through what I realised had been still a faint filming of disbelief. ‘I believe you, truly I do, though it gets more fantastic every minute I look at you, even with the foreign accent! You might be her twin . . .’ With an effort, it seemed, he dragged his uncomfortably intent stare from my face, and bent to caress the dog’s ears. ‘Please forgive me!’ The swift upward glance held nothing now but a charming apology. ‘I must have scared you, charging up like that and looming over you like a threat from the past.’

  ‘My past,’ I retorted, ‘never produced anything quite like this! That was some welcome your poor Prodigal was going to get, wasn’t it? I – er, I did gather you weren’t exactly going to kill the fatted calf for Annabel? You did say Annabel?’

  ‘Annabel. Well, no, perhaps I wasn’t.’ He looked away from me, down at the stretch of gleaming water. He seemed to be intent on a pair of swans sailing along near the reeds of the further shore. ‘You’d gather I was trying to frighten her, with all that talk.’

  It was a statement, not a question, but it had a curiously tentative effect. I said: ‘I did, rather.’

  ‘You didn’t imagine I meant any of that nonsense, I hope?’

  I said calmly: ‘Not knowing the circumstances, I have no idea. But I definitely formed the impression that this cliff was a great deal too high, and the road was a great deal too far away.’

  ‘Did you now?’ There, at last, was the faintest undercurrent of an Irish lilt. He turned his head, and our eyes met.

  I was angry to find that I was slightly breathless again, though it was obvious that, if this excessively dramatic young man really had intended murder five minutes ago, he had abandoned the intention. He was smiling at me now, Irish charm turned full on, looking, I thought irritably, so like the traditional answer to the maiden’s prayer that it couldn’t possibly be true. He was offering me his cigarette-case, and saying, with a beautifully calculated lift of one eyebrow: ‘You’ve forgiven me? You’re not going to bolt straight away?’

  I ought, of course, to have turned and gone then and there. But the situation was no longer – if, indeed, it had ever been – dangerous. I had already looked, and felt, fool enough for one day; it wou
ld look infinitely more foolish now to turn and hurry off, quite apart from its being difficult to do with dignity. Besides, as my fright had subsided, my curiosity had taken over. There were things I wanted to know. It isn’t every day that one is recognised – and attacked – for a ‘double’ some years dead.

  So I stayed where I was, returned his smile of amused apology, and accepted the cigarette.

  I sat down again where I had been before, and he sat on the wall a yard away, with the collie at his feet. He was half turned to face me, one knee up, and his hands clasping it. His cigarette hung in the corner of his mouth, the smoke wisping up past his narrowed eyes.

  ‘Are you staying near by? No, I suppose you can’t be, or everyone would be talking . . . You’ve a face well known in these parts. You’re just up here for the day, then? Over here on holiday?’

  ‘In a way. Actually I work in Newcastle, in a café. This is my day off.’

  ‘In Newcastle?’ He repeated it in a tone of the blankest surprise. ‘You?’

  ‘Yes. Why on earth not? It’s a nice town.’

  ‘Of course. It’s only that . . . well, all things considered, it seems odd that you should have come to this part of the world. What brought you here?’

  A little pause. I said abruptly: ‘You know, you still don’t quite believe me. Do you?’

  For a moment he didn’t reply, that narrow gaze still intent through the smoke of the cigarette. I met it squarely. Then he unclasped his hands slowly, and took the cigarette out of his mouth. He tapped ash off it, watching the small gout of grey feathering away in the air to nothing.

  ‘Yes. I believe you. But you mustn’t blame me too much for being rude, and staring. It’s a queer experience, running into the double of someone you knew.’

  ‘Believe me, it’s even queerer learning that one has a double,’ I said. ‘Funnily enough, it’s a thing one’s inclined to resent.’

  ‘Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that, but I believe you’re right! I should hate like hell to think there were two of me.’

  I thought: and I believe you; though I didn’t say it aloud. I smiled. ‘It’s a violation of one’s individuality, I suppose. A survival of a primitive feeling of – what can one call it – identity? Self-hood? You want to be you, and nobody else. And it’s uncomfortably like magic. You feel like a savage with a looking-glass, or Shelley seeing his doppelgänger one morning before breakfast.’