The Ivy Tree

by Mary Stewart

  I found I was leaning against the chilly metal of the cooler. The shaking had stopped, but I felt cold, with a sweating, empty slackness, like someone who has just vomited. My brain felt bruised, and incapable of any thought except a formless desire to get to bed, and sleep.

  ‘Well, by God!’ said Con, just behind me.

  Even then, I turned slowly, and stared at him with what must have been a blank and stupid look. ‘Where were you?’ Then, my voice tautening: ‘How much did you hear?’

  He laughed, and lounged out of the inner shed into the light. He looked quite composed, even over-composed, and his eyes were brilliant and his expression confident. His mouth was cut a little at the corner, and a graze showed swollen, but it only served to lend him a sort of extra rakish attraction.

  He came close to me, and stood there, hands deep in pockets, swaying backwards and forwards on his heels, graceful and collected. ‘Oh, I kept my distance! I thought that Forrest and I hadn’t much to say to one another, girl dear. And I thought that maybe you’d handle him a bit better than I could. And it seems I was right, me jewel. Was it you switched the engines off?’

  ‘Yes. As an alibi for murder it wasn’t bad, on the spur of the moment, Con.’

  The brilliant eyes narrowed momentarily. ‘Who’s talking about murder now?’

  ‘I am. You switched the engines on, and the lights, so that they could be seen and heard from the house, and then you ran upstream and across the stepping-stones, and met Julie in the clearing.’

  ‘And if I did?’ The bright eyes were narrow and dangerous. He had stopped swaying. Suddenly I realised what I should have known even before he came so near. He was drunk. I could smell whisky on his breath. ‘And if I did?’ he said gently.

  ‘Adam was right. You did mean to kill her there, Con.’

  There was a little silence. His eyes never wavered. He said again, softly: ‘And if I did?’

  I said steadily: ‘Only this, that if you thought I’d stand for anything like that, you must be a fool and an imbecile. Or don’t you think at all? What sort of person d’you think I am? You said yourself not long ago that you knew I was straight, heaven help us, because otherwise you’d have been too scared of my trying to twist you in what we’re doing. Well, you blundering criminal fool, did you really think I’d see you kill Julie, and not send the whole works sky-high, myself included?’

  He was laughing now, completely unabashed. ‘All right, me darlin’, murder’s off the cards, is it? But you know, I’m not the fool you make me out to be. You weren’t supposed to know anything about it. Oh, you might have suspected all you liked in the morning, when her poor drowned body came up on the shingle, but what could you prove? You’d have kept quiet, and held your grandpa’s hand, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said, ‘and to think I felt sorry for you tonight, because you were so much alone.’

  ‘Well,’ said Con cheerfully, ‘there’s no harm done, is there, except a little keepsake from Forrest.’ He touched his cheek. ‘Did you manage to shut the bastard up after all?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He had begun to rock on his heels again. Somewhere behind the brilliant gaze was amusement, and wariness, and a speculation that for some reason made my skin crawl.

  ‘“Adam”, wasn’t it, now? How do you come to be calling him “Adam”, girl dear?’

  My heart gave a jerk that sickened me. I said, and was relieved to find that my voice sounded nothing but normal, and very tired: ‘That was one thing you and Lisa slipped up on. They must have got to Christian names. When I went today to get the strawberries, he called me “Annabel” . . . And now I’m going in. I can’t talk to you tonight. I’m tired, and you’re in the wrong kind of mood. Sufficient unto the day. You’re luckier than you deserve that nothing’s happened; and I can’t even guess what Adam Forrest’ll do tomorrow, but, just at the moment, I don’t care.’

  ‘That’s my girl.’ He spoke a little thickly. Before I realised what he was doing, his hands came out and he took me by the shoulders. His eyes between the beautiful lashes were sapphire-blue and laughing, and only slightly liquid with drink. ‘It’s beautiful you are, acushla, did you know?’

  ‘I could hardly avoid it, with Julie in front of me all day.’

  His teeth showed. ‘Good for you. But you take the shine out of Julie, bejasus and you do. Look, now—’

  I stood stiffly under his hands. ‘Con, you’re drunk, and you’re getting maudlin, and I loathe this stage Irishry anyway. If you think you can plan to murder Julie, and then bat off and drink yourself stupid, and then come and blarney me with a lot of phoney Irish, you can damned well think again. And—’ this as he moved, still smiling, and his hands tightened – ‘if you try to kiss me, that’ll be another slap on the jaw you’ll get, so I’m giving you fair warning.’

  His hands slackened, and dropped. He had flushed a little, but he still smiled. I said levelly: ‘Now, for heaven’s sake, Con, get to bed and sleep it off, and pray to every saint in heaven that Adam Forrest chooses to hold his tongue. And take it from me, this is the last time I cover up any single thing for you. Good night.’

  As I reached the doorway I looked back. He was standing looking after me with an expression where I could only read amusement and affection. He looked handsome and normal and quite sober and very nice.

  He smiled charmingly: ‘Good night, Annabel.’

  I said shortly: ‘Don’t forget to put the light out,’ and went quickly across the yard.

  16

  I wrote a letter to my love,

  And on the way I lost it;

  One of you has picked it up,

  And put it in her pocket.

  Traditional.

  I hardly slept that night. I lay, it seemed for hours, watching the wheeling moonlight outside the open curtains, while my mind, too exhausted for sleep, scratched and fretted its way round the complications of this absurd, this crazy masquerade.

  I suppose I dozed a little, for I don’t remember when the moon went down and the light came. I remember realising that the dark had slackened, and then, later, a blackbird fluted a piercing stave of song alone in the cold dawn. After he fell silent there was a deep hush, for the space of a long breath, and then, suddenly, all the birds in the world were chattering, whistling, jargoning in a mad medley of sound. In spite of my weariness and my fears, I found myself smiling. I had never heard the dawn chorus before. It was an ill wind, indeed, that blew no good.

  My moment of delight must have worked like the Ancient Mariner’s spontaneous prayer, for soon afterwards I fell deeply asleep. When I looked at the window again it was full daylight, and the birds were singing normally in the lilacs. I felt wide awake, with that floating bodiless calm that sometimes comes after a night of scanty sleeping. I got up, and went over to the window.

  It must be still very early. The dew was thick, grey almost as frost, on grass and leaf. The air smelt thin and cool, like polished silver. It was very still, with the promise of close and thundery heat to come. Far away, from the direction of West Lodge, I heard a cock crow thinly. Through a gap in the trees to my left I saw the distant glint of chestnut, where the Forrest colt moved, cropping the wet grass.

  Sometimes, I think, our impulses come not from the past, but from the future. Before I had even clearly thought what I was doing, I had slipped into narrow grey trousers and a pale yellow shirt, had dashed cold water on my face, run a comb through my hair, and was out of my room, sliding downstairs as quietly as a shadow. The house slept on, undisturbed. I tiptoed out through the kitchen, and ten minutes later, bridle in hand, I was letting myself in through the gate of the meadow where Rowan grazed.

  I kept clear of the gap in the trees, so that, even if someone else were awake at Whitescar, I couldn’t be seen. I moved quietly along under the hedge, towards the horse. He had raised his handsome head as soon as I appeared, and now watched intently, ears pricked forward. I stopped under the guelder-rose, where there was a gap
in the hedge and a couple of railings. I sat on the top one and waited, dangling the bridle. The panicles of guelder-rose, thick coloured as Devonshire cream, spilled dew on to my shoulder, chilly through the thin shirt. I rubbed the damp patch, and shifted along the railing, so that the early sunshine struck my shoulders.

  Rowan was coming. He paced forward slowly, with a sort of grave beauty, like a creature out of the pages of poetry written when the world was young and fresh, and always just waking to an April morning. His ears were pricked so far forward that the tips almost met, his eyes large and dark, and mildly curious. His nostrils were flared, and their soft edges flickered as he tested the air towards me. The long grass swished under his hoofs, scattering the dew in bright, splashing showers. The buttercup petals were falling, and his hoofs and fetlocks were flecked gold with them, plastered there by the dew.

  Then he was a yard away, pausing: just a large, curious, hardly broken young horse staring at me with dark eyes that showed, at the edge, that unquiet hint of white. I said: ‘Hi, Rowan,’ but I didn’t move.

  He stretched his neck, blew gustily, then came on. Still I didn’t move. His ears twitched back, forward again, sensitive as snail’s horns, as radar antennae. His nostrils were blown wide, puffing sweet breath at my legs, at my waist, at my neck. He mouthed my sleeve, then took it in his teeth and tugged it.

  I put a hand on his neck, and felt the muscles run and shiver along under the warm skin. I ran the hand up to his ears, and he bent his head, blowing at my feet. My hand slipped up to the long tangled forelock, and held it. I slid slowly off the fence-bar, and he didn’t try to move away, but put his head down and rubbed it violently up my body, jamming me back against the railings. I laughed at him and said softly: ‘You beauty, you love, you lovely boy, stand still now, quiet now . . .’ and then turned him, with the hand on his forelock, till his quarters were against the railings, and his forehand free. Then with my other hand, still talking, I brought the bit up to his muzzle.

  ‘Come along now, my beauty, my darling boy, come along.’ The bit was between his lips and against his teeth. He held them shut against it for a few seconds; I thought he was going to veer away, but he didn’t. He opened his teeth, and accepted the steel warm from my hand. The bit slipped softly back into the corners of his mouth, and the bridle slid over his ears; then the rein was looped round my arm and I was fastening the cheek-strap, rubbing his ears, between his eyes, sliding my hand down the springy arch of his neck.

  I mounted from the top of the fence, and he came up against it and stood as if he had done it every day of his life. Then he moved away from it smoothly and softly, and only when I turned him towards the length of the field did he begin to gather himself and dance, and bunch his muscles as if to defy me to hold him. I’m not, in fact, quite sure how I did. He went at a canter, that lengthened too quickly towards a gallop, to the far corner of the long meadow, where there was a narrow wicket giving on the flat grass of the river’s edge. He was biddable enough at the wicket, so that I guessed that Adam Forrest had taken him this way, and taught him his manners at the gates. But, once through the wicket, he danced again, and the sun danced and dazzled too, down through the lime leaves, and the feel of his bare back warm and shifting with muscle between my thighs was exciting, so that I went mad all at once, and laughed, and said, ‘All right, have it your own way,’ and let him go; and he went, like a bat out of hell along the flat turf of the river’s edge, with that smooth lovely motion that was as easy to sit as an armchair; and I wound my right hand in his mane and stuck on like a burr to his withers with too-long-disused muscles that began to ache before long, and I said, ‘Hi, Rowan, it’s time we got back. I don’t want to get you in a lather, or there’ll be questions asked . . .’

  His ears moved back to my voice, and for a second or two after I began to draw rein, he resisted, leaning on the bit, and I wondered if I could manage to check and turn him. I slackened the bit for a moment to break his stride, and, as it broke, pulled him in. He came sweetly, ears flickering back to me, and then pointing again as he turned. I sang to him, mad now as the morning: ‘Oh, you beauty, you beauty, you love, home now, and steady . . .’

  We had come the best part of a mile, round the great curve of the river that led to West Lodge. I had turned him just in time. The chimneys of the Lodge were showing above the nearer trees. I spared a glance for them as the horse wheeled and cantered, sober and collected now, back along the river. His neck was damp, and I smoothed it, and crooned to him, and he flowed along smoothly and beautifully, and his ears twitched to my voice, and then, half way to his own meadow, I drew him to a walk, and we paced soberly home as if he was a hack hired for the day, and bored with it, and there had been no few minutes of mad delight there along the sward. He arched his neck demurely and fiddled with the bit, and I laughed at him and let him have it, and when we came to the wicket he stopped and moved his quarters round for me to reach, as gentle and dainty as a dancer.

  I said: ‘All right, sweetheart, that’s all for today,’ and slid down off him and ducked under his neck to open the wicket. He pushed through, eager now for home. I turned to shut the wicket, and Rowan wheeled with me, and then snorted and threw up his head, and dragged hard at the rein I was holding.

  I said: ‘Steady, beautiful? What’s up?’ And looked up to see Adam Forrest a yard away, waiting beside the wicket, watching me.

  He had been hidden from me by the thick hawthorn hedge, but of course he would have heard Rowan’s hoofs, and seen us coming from some way off. He was prepared, where I was not. I actually felt the colour leave my face, and stood stock still, in the act of latching the gate, like a child in some silly game, one hand stiffly held out, the other automatically holding the startled horse.

  The moment of shock snapped, and passed. The wicket clicked shut, and Adam came forward a pace and took Rowan’s bridle from me. I noticed then that he had brought a bridle himself; it hung from a post in the hedge beside him, and there was a saddle perched astride a rail.

  It seemed a very long time before he spoke. I don’t know what I expected him to say; I know that I had time to think of his own reactions as well as my own; to imagine his resentment, shame, anger, bewilderment.

  What he said was merely: ‘Why did you do it?’

  The time had gone past for evasions and pretences; in any case Adam and I had always known rather too well what the other was thinking. I said merely: ‘I’d have thought that was obvious. If I’d known you were still at Forrest I’d never have come. When I found I had to face you, I felt caught, scared – oh, anything you like, and when you wouldn’t just write it off and let me go, I suppose I got desperate. Then you decided I was an impostor, and I was so shaken that on the spur of the moment I let you go on thinking it. It was – easier, as long as I could persuade you to keep quiet about me.’

  Between us the horse threw up his head and fidgeted with the bit. Adam was staring at me as if I were some barely decipherable manuscript he was trying to read. I added: ‘Most of what I told you was true. I wanted to come back, and try to make it up with Grandfather. I’d thought about it for some time, but I didn’t think he’d want me back. What kept me away was the worst kind of pride, I know; but he’s always rather played power-politics with money – he’s terribly property-conscious, like a lot of his generation – and I didn’t want to be taunted with just coming back to claim my share, or to put in my claim for Mother’s money.’ I gave a little smile. ‘As a matter of fact, it was almost the first thing he said to me. Well, there it was, partly pride, partly not being able to afford the passage . . . and, apart from all those considerations, there was you.’

  I paused. ‘But after a bit I began to see things differently. I wanted desperately to come back to England, and I wanted not to be . . . completely cut off from my home any more. I didn’t write; don’t ask me why. I suppose it was the same impulse that makes you turn up unexpectedly, if you have to visit a house where you’re not sure of your welcome; warni
ng them gives people too much time to think of excuses, and be wary; whereas once you’re on the doorstep they’ve got to welcome you. Maybe you don’t know about such things, being a man, but I assure you it’s quite commonly done, especially if you’re a person who’s never sure of their welcome, like me. And as for you, I – I thought I might be able to keep out of your way. I knew that . . . things . . . would be long since over for you, but I thought you’d understand why I felt I had to come back. If I had to meet you, I’d manage to let you know I’d only come on a visit, and was going to get a job elsewhere.’

  Rowan jerked his head, and the bit jingled. Adam seemed unconscious of the movement. I went on: ‘I’d saved a bit, and when Mrs Grey – my last employer – died, she left me a little money, three hundred dollars, along with a few trinkets for keepsakes.’ I smiled briefly, thinking of the gold lighter, and the car permit left so carefully for Con and Lisa to find. ‘She was a cripple, and I’d been with her quite a time, as a sort of housekeeper-chauffeuse. I was very fond of her. Well, with the three hundred dollars, and my savings, I managed to pay for my passage, with something left over. I came straight up to Newcastle from Liverpool, and got myself a room, and a temporary job. I waited a day or two, trying to nerve myself to come back and see how things were. Of course, for all I knew, Grandfather was dead . . .’

  Half absently I stooped and pulled a swatch of grass, and began to wisp the horse. Adam stood without moving; I had hardly looked at him. It was queer that when a part of your life, your very self, was dead, it could still hurt you, as they say a limb still does, after it has been cut off.

  ‘I hadn’t wanted to make too many enquiries, in case Con somehow got to hear of it. I’d even taken my rooms in the name of my last employer, Mrs Grey. I didn’t know what to do, how to make my approach. I wanted to apply to the lawyers for Mother’s money, you see, only I wasn’t sure if I dared risk Con’s finding out I was home. Well, I waited a day or two, wondering what to do—’