The Ivy Tree

by Mary Stewart

  ‘Of course. Stupid of me.’ He spoke as if he were discussing the weather. ‘You hand the major part to him, and are allowed to keep your “competence”. How very neat, always assuming that there’s sufficient honour among thieves . . . Where did you meet Connor Winslow?’

  I said evasively: ‘Oh, he saw me one day. I had a job in Newcastle, and I came out to this part of the country one Sunday, for a day out, you know, a walk. He saw me, and thought, as you did, that I was his cousin come back. He followed me, and found out who I was, and we talked.’ I didn’t feel it necessary to go into details of the three weeks’ planning; nor did I bother to tell him that I had, to begin with, opposed Con’s plan myself.

  ‘And hatched this up between you?’ The contempt in his voice was hardly veiled. ‘Well, so far, I gather, you’ve been completely successful . . . as why shouldn’t you be? The thing’s so fantastic that you’d be almost bound to get away with it, given the nerve, the information . . . and the luck.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, calmly enough, ‘it seems the luck’s failed, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Indeed it does.’ His voice was gentle, calculating. He was watching me almost with hatred, but I could forgive him that, remembering how he had betrayed himself to me. He said slowly: ‘Yes, you’ve been clever. I don’t know how easily you managed to deceive the people at Whitescar, but, after Julie had talked to you, you must have realised you couldn’t hope to get away with such a deception with me. You must have gone through quite a bad moment when you heard that your erstwhile lover was coming home.’

  ‘Quite a bad moment,’ I said steadily.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. But you kept your head, clever Miss Grey. You had to risk seeking me out here and talking to me; you didn’t dare wait to meet me for the first time in public. So you took the chance, and came. Why didn’t you go to the summer-house?’

  ‘The summer-house? Do you mean that little pavilion along the other end, in the rhododendrons? I didn’t realise that had been your meeting-place, till you told me so yourself.’

  ‘It would hardly have been here,’ he said drily, with a glance at the blank and staring windows.

  ‘I did realise that. But this seemed the obvious spot to wait. I – I thought if you came at all, you’d come this way to look.’

  ‘Yes, well, I came. So far, you’ve been right every way, Miss Grey: but now, what happens? You’re taking this remarkably calmly, aren’t you? Do you really imagine that I won’t blow the whole thing sky-high on you?’

  I thrust my hands down into my pockets again. I said coolly: ‘I have no idea what you’ll do. It’s quite possible that tomorrow you’ll turn up at Whitescar, and tell Grandfather what you’ve learned tonight. You’ll tell him that she’s dead after all, and that all these years Con has been nursing his resentment, and planning to take Whitescar . . . and looking forward to Grandfather’s death. And you might add for good measure that Julie’s thinking of marrying, and that her husband’s job will take her away from Whitescar.’

  There was a silence. Adam Forrest said unemotionally: ‘You bitch.’

  ‘I thought you’d see it my way.’ (Con, smiling at me in the lane, his voice soft in the whisper that conspirators, and lovers, use. Yes, Con had taught me how to play it.) ‘It’s really better for everyone the way it is, isn’t it?’ I finished, gently.

  ‘Whether a thing is right or wrong doesn’t depend on how many people it hurts. This is wrong.’

  I said suddenly, violently: ‘How the hell dare you sit in judgment on me, Adam Forrest?’

  He jumped. I saw his eyes narrow on me suddenly, then he relaxed with a queer little sigh. ‘Then what about Julie? I can’t see that it’s “better” for her. This criminal arrangement of yours may suit everyone else, including old Mr Winslow, since it means keeping him in a false paradise until he dies. But what about Julie?’

  ‘Julie has money of her own. So has this man of hers, and he’s “’way up in his profession”.’

  ‘That,’ said Adam Forrest gently, ‘is hardly the point.’

  ‘It’s the point unless you do propose to – what’s the phrase we crooks use? – blow the gaff.’

  He was giving me that appraising, narrow stare again. ‘I could, you know. In fact, I must.’

  ‘You’d find it very difficult to convince Grandfather. Con and Lisa did a very good job of briefing, and I’m well dug in. And Julie would just laugh at you.’

  There was another of those silences. He didn’t stir, but I felt the hair prickle along my skin as if I had expected a blow.

  When he spoke, his voice sounded quite normal, friendly, almost. ‘You speak like an American.’

  ‘Canadian, actually.’ I was surprised and wary. ‘It’s one of my assets, of course, as an impersonator. She went to the States, and, according to my story, from there to Canada.’

  ‘To come from Canada, Miss Grey, one needs a passport.’ He laughed suddenly, not a nice sound. ‘Yes, I thought that would get through to you. Nobody else thought of it?’

  I said hoarsely: ‘Why should they? They accepted me without question. You don’t usually ask to see people’s papers, unless there’s some doubt.’

  ‘That,’ he said pleasantly, ‘is just what I mean. And I shouldn’t destroy it, my dear. They’re terribly easy to trace.’

  I drove my fists down, and held them steady.

  ‘Mr Forrest—’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think you quite understand, you know. Grandfather—’

  ‘I understand perfectly. You and Connor are trading on his age and sickness. That’s quite clear. But it’s Julie I’m thinking about – Julie, and my own constitutional dislike of seeing anyone get away with this kind of damned lie. If I did agree to hold my tongue now, it would be purely for old Mr Winslow’s sake. But if he dies—’

  I said violently: ‘How much of a fool can you be? If he dies before he re-makes his Will, and you throw Annabel back into her grave, what do you suppose would happen to Julie?’

  This time the silence was electric. The night was so still that I heard my own heart-beats, and I thought he must hear them, too. Ten miles off, a train whistled for a crossing.

  As if it had been a signal to wake us both, he said: ‘Don’t be absurd.’ But his voice had slackened with uncertainty.

  ‘I meant it, oddly enough. I think I know Con Winslow a little better than you do.’

  ‘That’s very probable,’ he spoke with (I thought) a quite undue dryness. ‘If this – fantasy – is true, do I take it that you expect to stay on in safety at Whitescar?’

  ‘I’ll face that when the time comes.’

  ‘You think he’ll marry you? Are you playing for that, too?’

  ‘Look here—!’ I began hotly, then stopped and bit my lip. It was an obvious conclusion, after all. ‘I am not,’ I said clearly, ‘anything to Con Winslow, or he to me . . . except accomplices.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ His apology was surprisingly prompt, and sounded genuine. ‘Then am I to take it that you are protecting Julie . . . for a “competence”?’

  ‘You can take it how you like. I’ve assured you that no one will be harmed by what I’m doing, but I don’t expect you to believe me. Why should you? I can only beg you to keep out of what doesn’t concern you . . . at least until you see wrong being done.’

  He said, all at once sounding very tired, ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Why should you? But I mean what I say, remember that. And I’m telling you the truth about this. I’m playing this game for my own advantage, that’s obvious; I saw a chance to get out of poverty and hard work, to grab what they call a place in the sun, and I took it. It’s wrong, I admit that; I’m unscrupulous, I admit that. But I’m not bad, and I wouldn’t do it if anyone was going to suffer for it. Believe me, they’ll have plenty, and the little I’ll get will mean a lot to me, and nothing to any of them.’
/>   He said, angrily: ‘That’s immoral nonsense. It’s also quite beside the point.’

  ‘I know that.’ I laughed. ‘But all the same, you think about it, Mr Forrest. This is one of those cases where to do the right thing, will be to do nothing but harm. So let well alone, will you? Stifle your conscience, and keep away from Grandfather. It’s none of your business, after all.’

  ‘If I could believe you. If I knew what you were playing at.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, or about my future. It has nothing to do with you.’

  He let out a breath like a sigh. ‘No. All right. I’ll keep out of it, for a while at least. But watch your step . . . Annabel.’ As I caught my breath, he added, roughly: ‘If I’m to play your game, or even watch from the touchlines, I can hardly call you “Miss Winslow”.’

  ‘Then you will . . . play my game?’ I said breathlessly.

  ‘I think so. Though heaven knows why. Let’s say I’ll go away and think about it, and hold a watching brief. But I promise you that if I plan to – what was it? – “blow the gaff”, I’ll warn you first.’

  I said huskily: ‘I don’t know why you should do this for me.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ he said wearily. ‘But . . . be careful.’

  ‘I intend to. And I – I’m sorry I said those things to you.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘About your dismissing Annabel and then wanting to take up your – your love affair again. It was unkind, but – well, I was scared. You must see that I’d have said anything to . . . make you let me go.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  I hesitated. ‘Good night . . . Adam.’

  He didn’t answer. I turned away and left him.

  Just before the dark leaves of the rhododendrons hid him from me, I thought I heard him say ‘Good night.’

  12

  Why should not I love my love?

  Why should not my love love me?

  Why should not I speed after him,

  Since love to all is free?

  Traditional.

  The days went by, warm and cloudless. Haymaking was in full swing, and the mown fields smelt Elysian, lying in ribbed gold under a blue sky. Wild roses tumbled anyhow through all the hedges, and Tommy, the fat black and white cat, startled everyone by confounding the experts and having seven kittens.

  And Adam Forrest did nothing.

  I had got the passport away to the bank, which made me feel a little better, but it was a day or two after that moonlit meeting before I stopped watching the road between West Lodge and Whitescar. When two days, three days, passed, with no sign from him, I began to think that perhaps, having ‘thought it over’, he had decided to take me at my word, and, for Grandfather’s sake, to hold his tongue and await developments. I had not seen him again, though Julie had once or twice persuaded me to walk through the river-meadows to look at the horse, Rowan: and I had gone, realising that, whatever Adam Forrest’s intentions, I might as well behave as normally as possible, and naturally Julie expected my interest in the colt to be intense.

  I had made no further attempt at confidence with Julie, and she had offered none, but I could not help suspecting that all was far from well between her and Donald Seton. How far her own feelings were settled, it was impossible to guess. She was young, volatile, perhaps a trifle spoiled, but from what little she had said to me – perhaps because she had said so little – I believed her affections to be seriously engaged. I had, on my first sight of Donald, decided that here was a man one could both like and respect; since then he had been down to Whitescar two or three times, and I had liked him better each time, though I thought I could see the cause of the tension that appeared to exist, if not between the two of them, then in Julie’s mind. I could see that his quietness, his steady reserve, might appear daunting and even formidable to a nineteen-year-old extrovert accustomed to the easy and outspoken admiration of the young men of her own London ‘set’. Still waters run deep, but at nineteen one can hardly be expected to appreciate the fact.

  The complaint she had made in jest, on that first evening, had its foundations firmly in the truth. Donald Seton would not ‘fit into any romantic context’. And Julie, for all her gay sophistication, was young enough still to want her love affair sprinkled with stardust, and vulnerable enough to be hurt by a reserve which she must mistake for indifference, or at best a reluctance to pursue. Donald was, in other words, a disappointment. Liking, affection, comradeship, all growing steadily from the first seed of love – these were not what Julie, at nineteen, was looking for. Not happiness, but intensity, was what she craved. As a lover, the quiet Scot by no means measured up to the standards of Julie’s favourite reading, or (more immediately) to those of the unhappy man who, eight years ago, had left notes for his mistress in the old ivy tree. Poor Julie, if she only knew . . . I found myself hoping, with quite startling fervour, that Donald would emerge soon from his Roman preoccupation, and Speak.

  Meanwhile, he called at Whitescar in the evenings, after work had packed up, and on one occasion, Julie went up to West Woodburn to see what was going on there, and even, possibly, in a genuine attempt to learn something about the job.

  Although in this, it seemed, she was not successful, it did appear as if Donald had moved at least a little of the way towards her. He had brought her back in the evening, and stayed to dinner, listening silently and in apparent amusement to her lively – and malicious – account of the way he occupied his time.

  ‘Sitting in a hole,’ said Julie, ‘my dears, I mean it, sitting all day at the bottom of a little pit, scraping away at mud, and with a thing the size of a teaspoon! Nothing but mud, honestly! And every spoonful preserved as if it was the Grand Cham’s jewels. I never was so disillusioned in my life!’

  ‘No gold coins? No statues?’ I asked, smiling.

  ‘My dear, I think there was a Roman bootlace.’

  Donald’s eyes twinkled. ‘That was our big day. You mustn’t expect excitement all the time.’

  She opened her lips, and then shut them again. I thought her smile was brittle. I said quickly: ‘Just what are you doing, anyway?’

  ‘Only a preliminary bit of dating.’

  ‘Dating?’ Grandfather looked up from his cheese.

  I saw Donald glance at him in that diffident way he had, and affirm that this was genuine interest and not mere civility, before he replied. ‘Yes, sir. It does consist, as Julie says, of just scratching at the earth. We’ve dug a trial trench through the wall and rampart of the fort, and we’re going down layer by layer, examining the successive ramparts, and whatever debris – in the way of pottery shards and so on – comes to light as we work down. In that way, we can determine what building was done in the fort at different times. Eventually it sorts itself out into a picture of the general history of the place, but at present—’ the glimmer of a smile at her – ‘Julie’s quite right. It’s nothing but scraping at earth, and must seem deplorably dull.’

  ‘You seem to find it terribly absorbing, anyway,’ said Julie. I don’t think she had meant the words to have an edge, but they sounded almost pettish, like the retort of a piqued child.

  Donald didn’t appear to notice. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s like most jobs, I suppose, masses of dull routine most of the time; but the good moments, when they come, can be pretty exciting.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Julie, then suddenly laughed, with an attempt at her normal sparkle of good humour. ‘Well, for goodness’ sake tell us when that’s likely to happen, and we’ll all come and watch! At least—’ this to me – ‘he’s coming up out of the mud on Wednesday. Did I tell you? And so am I. We’re going into Newcastle, to the Royal.’

  ‘The theatre? How lovely. But, darling, Wednesday . . . it’s Grandfather’s birthday, had you forgotten? We’re making rather an occasion of it, since we’re all here—’

  ‘Oh yes, I know, that’s why we’re going to the matinée. Donald says he can usually only manage Saturdays, but there weren’t any seats left, and i
t’s John Gielgud’s new play, and I simply cannot miss it. So Donald’s sneaking Wednesday off, after lunch, and we’re going. Grandfather knows, and we’ll be back in good time for the party. Donald’s staying for that, too.’

  ‘Very sensible of him. I know Lisa’s got something wonderful laid on, but she won’t tell me what it is.’

  Lisa smiled, but rather absently. I knew she was fidgeting until she could get out of the dining room and back to the kitchen, where she could start to prepare Con’s supper. When he worked late, she gave him this in the kitchen at whatever hour he came in, and I knew that, for her, this half-hour, when she had him to herself, was the peak of her day.

  ‘Look,’ Donald was saying, in that pleasant, unemphatic voice of his, ‘it’s very nice of you to have asked me, but I hadn’t realised it was a family party. I think perhaps I’d better say—’

  ‘Now, don’t go crying off,’ said Grandfather. ‘We’ll be thankful to have you. Never known a family gathering yet where the presence of a stranger didn’t do a lot of good. Families are usually pretty damned grim when they get together, especially Winslows. We’ll have to behave ourselves if you’re here.’

  Donald laughed. ‘Well, if you put it like that . . .’

  ‘I do indeed. Anything I have to say to the family as such, can be said in three minutes precisely, on the way to bed.’ The fierce, faded old eyes went round the table, lingering momentarily on Con’s empty chair. ‘And better so. There’s been too much talk already, and I can’t stomach post-mortems before I’m dead.’

  The sheer unfairness of this took my breath away, and I saw Julie open her eyes wide. Donald, to whom these last remarks had been addressed, said rather faintly: ‘Oh, quite.’

  I rescued him. ‘Then we’ll see you on Wednesday? That’ll be nice. What’s the play, Julie?’

  Julie, her face lighting, her pique forgotten, plunged happily into an account of it, unaware of the fact (or perhaps uncaring) that she was betraying with every word how far her heart lay from Whitescar and the quiet island of Forrest Park. I saw Grandfather watching her, an odd expression on his face. Ah well, I thought, this was best. I stole a glance at Lisa, to see if this was being stored up for Con, but she was looking at her watch, and murmuring something about coffee in the drawing room.