by Mary Stewart
‘He’s back, then?’
‘No, he’s not here now. He only came over to sell the place. The Forestry Commission have the parkland, and they’ve planted the lot, blast them. That’s the whole point. If I’d been able to lay my hands on a bit—’ He broke off.
‘The whole point?’
‘Skip it. Where was I? Oh, yes. The Hall’s gone completely, of course, and the gardens are running wild. But the Rudds – they were the couple who used to work at the Hall – the Rudds have moved across to the other side of the Park, where the West Lodge and the stables are. Johnny Rudd runs the place now as a sort of smallholding, and when Forrest was over here last year, he and Johnny got the old gardens going again, as a market garden, and I believe it’s doing quite well. Johnny’s running it now, with a couple of local boys.’
He was gazing away from me as he talked, almost dreamily, as if his attention was not fully on what he was saying. His profile was as handsome as the rest of him, and something about the way he lifted his chin and blew out a long jet of smoke, told me that he knew it, and knew I was watching him, too.
‘And Mr Forrest?’ I asked, idly. ‘Does he live permanently in Italy now?’
‘Mm? Italy? Yes, I told you, he has this place near Florence. He’s there now . . . and the place is abandoned to Johnny Rudd, and the Forestry Commission . . . and Whitescar.’ He turned his head. The long mouth curved with satisfaction. ‘Well? How’s that for a dramatic story of your homeland, Mary Grey? The Fall of the House of Forrest!’ Then, accusingly, as I was silent: ‘You weren’t even listening!’
‘Oh, I was. I was, really. You made a good story of it.’
I didn’t add what I had been thinking while I watched him; that he had told the dreary, sad little tale – about a man he liked – with rather less feeling and sympathy than there would have been in a newspaper report; had told it, in fact, as if he were rounding off a thoroughly satisfactory episode. Except, that is, for that one curious remark about the Forestry Commission’s planting programme.
He had also told it as if he had had no doubt of my own absorbed interest in every detail. I wondered why . . .
If I had some suspicion of the answer, I wasn’t prepared to wait and see if I was right. I looked round me for my handbag.
He said quickly: ‘What is it?’
The bag was on the ground at the foot of the Wall. I picked it up. ‘I’ll have to go now. I’d forgotten the time. My bus—’
‘But you can’t go yet! This was just getting exciting! If your great-grandmother knew about Forrest, it might mean—’
‘Yes, I suppose it might. But I’ll still have to go. We work Sunday evenings at my café.’ I got to my feet. ‘I’m sorry, but there it is. Well, Mr Winslow, it’s been interesting meeting you, and I—’
‘Look, you can’t just go like this!’ He had risen too. He made a sudden little movement almost as if he would have detained me, but he didn’t touch me. The rather conscious charm had gone from his face. He spoke quickly, with a kind of urgency. ‘I’m serious. Don’t go yet. My car’s here. I can run you back.’
‘I wouldn’t think of letting you. No, really, it’s been—’
‘Don’t tell me again that it’s been “interesting”. It’s been a hell of a lot more than that. It’s been important.’
I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I told you. This sort of thing isn’t pure chance. I tell you, it was meant.’
‘Meant?’
‘Ordained. Destined. Kismet.’
‘Don’t be absurd.’
‘It’s not absurd. This thing that’s happened, it’s more than just queer. We can’t simply walk away in opposite directions now and forget it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why not?’ He said it almost explosively. ‘Because – oh, hell, I can’t explain, because I haven’t had time to think, but at any rate tell me the address of this place where you work.’ He was searching his pockets while he spoke, and eventually produced a used envelope and a pencil. When I didn’t answer, he looked up sharply. ‘Well?’
I said slowly: ‘Forgive me, I can’t explain either. But . . . I’d rather not.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Just that I would rather – what did you say? – that we walked away in opposite directions now, and forgot all about it. I’m sorry. Please try to understand.’
‘I don’t even begin to understand! It’s perfectly obvious to me that this likeness of yours to Annabel Winslow isn’t pure chance. Your people came from hereabout. I wasn’t only joking when I said we were long-lost cousins . . .’
‘Possibly we are. But can’t you grasp this? Let me be blunt. Whitescar and Winslows and all the rest may mean a lot to you, but why should they mean anything to me? I’ve been on my own a good long time now, and I like it that way.’
‘A job in a café? Doing what? Waiting? Cash desk? Washing up? You? Don’t be a fool!’
‘You take this imaginary cousinship a bit too much for granted, don’t you?’
‘All right. I’m sorry I was rude. But I meant it. You can’t just walk away and – after all, you told me you were nearly broke.’
I said, after a pause: ‘You – you take your family responsibilities very seriously, don’t you, Mr Winslow? Am I to take it you were thinking of offering me a job?’
He said slowly: ‘Do you know, I might, at that. I . . . might.’ He laughed suddenly, and added, very lightly: ‘Blood being thicker than water, Mary Grey.’
I must have sounded as much at a loss as I felt. ‘Well it’s very nice of you, but really . . . you can hardly expect me to take you up on it, can you, even if our families might just possibly have been connected a hundred years or so ago? No, thanks very much, Mr Winslow, but I meant what I said.’ I smiled. ‘You know, you can’t have thought. Just what sort of a sensation would there be if I did turn up at Whitescar with you? Had you thought of that?’
He said, in a very strange voice: ‘Oddly enough, I had.’
For a moment our eyes met, and held. I had the oddest feeling that for just those few seconds each knew what the other was thinking.
I said abruptly: ‘I must go. Really. Please, let’s leave it at that. I won’t annoy you by telling you again that it’s been interesting. It’s been – quite an experience. But forgive me if I say it’s one I don’t want to take any further. I mean that. Thank you for your offer of help. It was kind of you. And now this really is goodbye . . .’
I held out my hand. The formal gesture seemed, in these surroundings, and after what had passed, faintly absurd, but it would, I hoped, give the touch of finality to the interview, and provide the cue on which I could turn my back and leave him standing there.
To my relief, after a moment’s hesitation, he made no further protest. He took the hand quite simply, in a sort of courteous recognition of defeat.
‘Goodbye, then, Mary Grey. I’m sorry. All the best.’
As I left him I was very conscious of him standing there and staring after me.
2
Whisht! lads, haad your gobs
An’ Aa’ll tell ye aal an aaful story.
C. F. LEUMANE:
The Lambton Worm.
The woman was there again.
For the last three days, punctually at the same time, she had pushed her way through the crowded aisles of the Kasbah Coffee House, and had found herself a seat in a corner. This last fact alone argued a good deal of stubborn determination, since at half past five in the afternoon the Kasbah was always crowded. But, either owing to her own fixity of purpose, or to the good manners of the students who, at that time of day, made up most of the Kasbah’s clientéle, she got her corner seat every day, and there she sat, sipping her Espresso very slowly, and working her way through a Sausageburger Special, while the brightly lit café crowd swirled round her table, the deafening babel of young voices earnestly and dogmatically discussing love, death, and the afternoon’s lectures against an emphatic backgroun
d of Messrs Presley, Inc., and what I had learned to recognise as the Kool Kat’s Klub.
I myself had not noticed the woman until she was pointed out to me. I was on tableduty that week, and was too occupied in weaving my laden way through the crowds to clear the dirty cups away and wipe the scarlet plastic tabletops, to pay much attention to a dull-looking woman in country clothes, sitting alone in a corner. But Norma, from her position behind the Espresso machine, had observed her, and thought her ‘queer’. It was Norma’s most deadly adjective.
‘She stares, I’m telling you. Not at the students, though take it from me what I see from up here’s nobody’s business sometimes; the things you see when you haven’t got your gun. I mean, take a look at that one, that blonde in the tartan jeans, and when I say in she’s only just to say in, isn’t she? And I happen to know her da’s a professor up at the University. Well, I don’t know about a professor, exactly, but he works up in the Science Colleges and that shows you, doesn’t it? I mean to say. Two coffees? Biscuits? Well, we’ve got Popoffs and Yumyums and – oh yes, two Scrumpshies . . . ta, honey. Pay at the cash desk. The things some people eat, and look at her figure, it stands to reason. Oh yes, the woman in the corner, she’s off her rocker, if you ask me, fair gives you the creeps the way she stares. Don’t say you hadn’t noticed her, it’s you she’s watching, love, take it from me. All the time. Not so’s you’d see it, but every time you’re looking away there she is, staring. Nutty as a fruit cake, love, take it from me.’
‘Stares at me, d’you mean?’
‘That’s what I’m telling you. Three coffees, one tea. Pay at the desk. Stares at you all the time. Can’t seem to take her eyes off you. No, not that girl, she’s with that black-haired chap in the Antarctic get-up who’s over at the juke-box, would you credit it, he’s got that tune again . . . Yes, that woman over there under the contemp’ry Crusaders. The middle-aged one with the face like blotting-paper.’
I turned to look. It was true. As my eyes met hers, the woman looked quickly down at her cup. I lowered my tray of dirty crockery slowly till the edge rested against the bar-counter, and considered her for a moment.
She could have been anything between thirty-five and forty – ‘middle-aged’, to Norma, meant anything over twenty-six – and the first adjective I myself would have applied to her would have been ‘ordinary’, or, at any rate, ‘inconspicuous’, rather than ‘queer’. She wore goodish, but badly chosen country clothes, and a minimum of make-up – powder, I guessed, and a touch of lipstick which did little to liven the dull, rather heavy features. Her hair under the slightly out-of-date felt hat was dark, and worn plainly in a bun. Her eyebrows were thick and well marked, but untidy looking over badly set eyes. The outer corners of brows, eyes, and mouth were pulled down slightly, giving the face its heavy, almost discontented expression. The general effect of dullness was not helped by the browns and fawns of the colour scheme she affected.
I saw at once what Norma had meant by that last, graphic phrase. One got the curious impression that the woman only just missed being good looking; that the features were somehow blurred and ill defined, as if they had been drawn conventionally enough, and then the artist had smoothed a light, dry hand carelessly down over the drawing, dragging it just that fraction out of focus. She could have been a bad copy of a portrait I already knew; a print blotted off some dramatically sharp sketch that was vaguely familiar.
But even as I tried to place the impression, it slid away from me. I had never, to my recollection, seen her before. If I had, I would scarcely have noticed her, I thought. She was the kind of woman whom, normally, one wouldn’t have looked at twice, being at first sight devoid of any of the positive qualities that go to make up that curious thing called charm. Charm presupposes some sort of vivacity and spark, at least what one might call some gesture of advance towards life. This woman merely sat there, heavily, apparently content to wait while life went on around her.
Except for the tireless stare of those toffee-brown eyes. As I let my own gaze slide past her in apparent indifference, I saw her eyes lift once more to my face.
Norma said, in my ear: ‘D’you know her?’
‘Never seen her before in my life. Yes, I know who you mean, the woman in the brown hat; I just didn’t want her to see me staring, that’s all. Are you sure, Norma? She’s not just sitting there kibitzing in general?’
‘’Course I’m sure. What else have I got to do—’ here she laid hold of the Espresso handle with one hand, reached for a couple of cups with the other, filled them, slapped them on to their saucers and the saucers on to a tray, supplied the tray with sugar and teaspoons, and pushed the lot across to Mavis, the waitress on duty in the inner room – ‘What else have I got to do, but watch what’s going on?’
Mavis, I noticed, had passed quite close to the corner table, bound for the inner room with the coffee cups. The woman didn’t glance at her.
‘Still watching you . . .’ murmured Norma. ‘You see?’
‘You must be mistaken. It’s a nervous mannerism, or she thinks I’m someone she knows, or—’ I broke off short.
‘Or what?’
‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter anyway. Let her stare if it gives her pleasure.’
‘Sure. I should worry. Poor old thing’s going round the bend, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Norma kindly. ‘All the same, you watch it, Mary. I mean to say, kind of uncomf’able, isn’t it? Someone staring at you all the time, stands to reason.’ She brightened. ‘Unless she’s a talent scout for films, or the TV. Now, there’s a thing! D’you think it might be that?’
I laughed. ‘I do not.’
‘Why not? You’re still pretty,’ she said generously, ‘and you must have been lovely when you were young. Honest. Lovely.’
‘That’s very sweet of you. But anyway, talent scouts hang round the infant-school gates these days, don’t they? I mean, you’re practically crumbling to pieces at anything over nineteen.’
‘You’ve said it. On the shelf with your knittting at twenty-one,’ said Norma, who was eighteen and a half. ‘Well, all the same, you watch it. Maybe she’s one of those, you know, slip a syringe into your arm and away with you to worse than death before you know where you are.’
I began to laugh. ‘Who’s out of date now? I believe you have to queue for a place these days. No, I hardly see her putting that one across, Norma!’
‘Well, I do,’ said Norma stubbornly. ‘And you may well laugh, not but what it makes you wonder who said it was worse than death. A man, likely. Well, there’s no accounting for tastes, is there, not but what I wouldn’t just as soon have a good square meal, myself. Three coffees? Here you are. Sorry, I’ll give you a clean saucer. Ta. Pay at the desk. For crying out loud, he’s got that tune again.’
Compelling, piercing, and very skilful indeed, the saxes and (surely) the kornets of the Kool Kats bullied their way up triumphantly through the noises of the café and street outside.
I said hurriedly: ‘I’ll have to take these through to the kitchen. See you later. Keep your eye on the White Slaver.’
‘Sure. All the same, it’s all very well to laugh, but she’s got that kind of face. Stodgy, but clever, and more to her than meets the eye. Must be something, anyway, stands to reason. I mean, I’m telling you, the way she stares. Oh well, maybe you are just like someone she knows, or something.’
‘Maybe I am,’ I said.
I picked up the tray and, without another glance at the corner under the contemporary Crusaders, I pushed my way through the swing door into the steamy cubby-hole that the Kasbah called its kitchen.
Next day she was there again. And the next. And Norma was right. Now that I knew, I could feel it, the steady gaze that followed me about the place, pulling my own eyes so strongly that I had to will myself not to keep glancing back at her, to see if she was still watching me.
Once or twice I forgot, and my look did cross hers, to see her eyes drop just as they had before, and the heavy face, expressionles
s, stare down at the slow swirl of brown in her coffee cup as she stirred it. Another time when I caught the edge of her steady, obstinate stare, I stopped, cloth in hand – I was wiping a table top – and let myself look surprised, and a little embarrassed. She held my gaze for a moment, then she looked away.
It was on the third afternoon that I decided that there must be more in it than a chance interest. My recent encounter on the Roman Wall was still very much in the front of my mind, and I felt strongly that that afternoon’s mistakes would hardly bear repeating.
When the bar-counter was quiet, I paused by it, and said to Norma: ‘She’s still at it, your White Slaver in the corner. And I’m tired of it. I’m going over to speak to her and ask her if she thinks she’s ever met me.’
‘Well, you needn’t bother,’ said Norma. ‘I been trying to get a minute to tell you ever since a quarter to six. She’s bin asking about you. Asked Mavis who you were.’
‘Did she?’
‘Uh-huh. Right out. Got hold of Mavis while you were in the kitchen. What’s up?’
‘Nothing. No, really. What did Mavis tell her?’
‘Well, she didn’t see nothing wrong in it, the old girl said she thought she knew you anyway, and asked if you came from these parts and if you were living in Newcastle. So Mavis said who you were and that you’d come from Canada and had a fancy to stay up north for a bit, seeing as your family’d come from round here hundreds of years ago, and that you were just working here temp’ry like, till you get yourself sorted out and found a proper job. Mavis didn’t see anything wrong in telling her, a woman like that, sort of respectable. It’s not as if it was a man, after all, is it?’