by Mary Stewart
‘Just a minute.’ Adam, it seemed, was listening, after all. ‘Why should you not “dare” let Connor know you were home?’
I ran the wisp along Rowan’s neck, and said briefly: ‘He tried to kill me one night, along the river, just near where we found him with Julie.’
He moved at that. ‘He what?’
‘He’d wanted to marry me. Grandfather wanted it, too. You knew that. Con hadn’t a hope then – or so he thought – of getting the property any other way, so he used to – to harry me a bit. Well, that night he threw a bit of a scene, and I wasn’t just in the mood for it; I wasn’t exactly tactful, and I made it a bit too clear that he hadn’t a hope, then or ever, and . . . well, he lost his temper and decided to get rid of me. He chances his arm, does Con.’ I lifted my eyes, briefly, from my task. ‘That’s how I guessed, last night, that he’d have gone to find Julie. That’s why I followed her.’
‘Why did you never tell me?’
His tone was peremptory, proprietorial, exactly as it might have been eight years ago, when he had had the right.
‘There was no chance. It happened the last night I was here. I was on my way home, after I’d left you in the summer-house. You remember how late it was. You know how I always used to go over the river by the stepping-stones, and then home by the path and the bridge, so no one would know I’d been to Forrest. It was just as well I bothered, because that night I ran into Con.’
‘Oh, my God.’
‘That was the – the other reason why I ran away. Grandfather took his part, you see. He’d been angry with me for months because I wouldn’t look at Con, and there’d been scenes because he’d found I was staying out late, and I’d lied once or twice about where I’d been. He – I suppose it was natural, really – he used to storm at me, and say that if I ever got into trouble, I could go, and stay away . . .’ I smiled a little. ‘I think it was only talk and temper; it was a bit hard on Grandfather, being saddled with an adolescent girl to look after, but of course adolescents take these things seriously. When I got home that night, after getting away from Con, I was pretty nearly hysterical. I told Grandfather about Con, and he wouldn’t believe me. He knew I’d been out somewhere, and suspected I’d met somebody, and all he would say was “where had I been?” because it was late, and he’d sent Con to find me himself. I think he just thought Con had lost his head and had been trying to kiss me, and all I was saying about murder was pure hysteria. I don’t blame him, but there was a . . . pretty foul scene. There’s no point in raking it all up: you can imagine the kind of things that were said. But you see why I ran away? Partly because of what had happened between you and me, and because I was scared stiff of Con . . . and now because Grandfather was taking his part, and I was afraid he and Con would start ferreting about, and discover about you. If Crystal had found out . . . the way she was just then . . .’
Rowan put his head down, and began to graze with a jingling of metal. I paused, leaning one hand against his neck. ‘Well, you understand why I was afraid to come back to Whitescar, even now. If Con had been in charge here, alone, I’d never have dared, but once I found that Grandfather was still alive, and still playing at power-politics between me and Con and Julie, and that Julie might be exposed to exactly the same sort of danger as I had been . . .’
‘And that I had gone.’
‘And that you had gone,’ I said steadily, ‘I knew I’d have to come back here. It would still have been a pretty sticky thing to attempt, in the teeth of Con and Lisa, and not being sure of Grandfather’s reception of me, but then Con himself appeared like Lucifer out of the blue, and presented me with what looked like a nice, peaceful, Connor-proof homecoming. I rather grabbed at it. I only planned, you see, to stay here as long as Grandfather lived.’
‘I begin to see. How did you fall in with Connor?’
‘I took a risk which I shouldn’t have taken, and went to take a look at Whitescar. I didn’t even get out of the bus, just went along the top road from Bellingham to Chollerford, one Sunday. I got out at Chollerford, to get the bus along the Roman Road. I – I wanted to walk along the Wall, to – to see it again.’
Nothing in his face betrayed the fact that lay sharply between us; that it was on the Wall that he and I, sometimes, by chance – and oh, how carefully calculated a chance! – had met.
I said steadily: ‘Con saw me. He waited his chance and followed me. He recognised me, of course, or thought he did. When he came up on me I was startled, and scared stiff, and then I saw he was just doubtful enough for me to pretend he’d made a mistake. So I gave him the name I’d been using, and got away with it.’ I went on to tell him, then, of the interview on the Wall, and the subsequent suggestions that were made to me. ‘And finally, when I realised that Con was fairly well “in” with Grandfather, and that he and Lisa had it in for Julie, and that Grandfather himself had had a stroke . . . Well, I thought to myself, this is one way of getting home with Con not lifting a finger to stop me. So I agreed. And it went off well enough, until I found that you were still here . . .’
He said with sudden impatience: ‘That horse isn’t sweating. Leave that alone. We’ll turn him loose.’
He began to unbuckle the cheek-strap, adding, with as much emotion as if he were discussing the price of tomatoes: ‘Go on. When did you find I was still here?’
‘Grandfather mentioned it, quite casually, the first evening. I’d managed to chisel a bit out of Con and Lisa, about the fire, and your taking Crystal to Italy, and then Vienna, and the nursing-homes and everything, and her death, but you know Con, he’s interested in nothing but himself, and I didn’t dare press too much about you and your affairs. When I heard from Grandfather that you hadn’t gone permanently, it gave me a shock. I went that night to Con and said I wanted to back down. He – threatened me. No, no, nothing like that, he just said what was true, that it had gone too far, and that a hint of the “truth” would shock Grandfather. Of course I knew I’d told Grandfather nothing but the truth, but for all they get across one another, he thinks the sun rises and sets in Con, and it would have finished him to know what sort of a swine Con is – can be. It still would. I realised that I’d have to stay, but the thought of having to meet you was . . . terrifying. I went over to Forrest that night, the night before you came.’
‘To lay the ghosts?’
‘I suppose so. But the next night . . . I knew you’d come, I don’t know how.’
You always did . . . Nobody had said the words. He wasn’t looking at me; he was sliding the bridle off, over Rowan’s ears. The horse, his head free, flung it up and sideways, and swerved away from us, thrusting out into the sunlight at a trot. Then he dropped his head, and began to graze again. Adam looked down at the bridle in his hands as if he wasn’t quite sure what it was, or how it had got there. Then he turned, and hung it with great care beside his own. ‘And when I came, you found it easier to let me think you – that Annabel was dead.’
‘Wasn’t she?’ I said.
He turned then, and for the first time we really looked at one another. ‘Why should you have thought so? After you’d gone, when you’d had time to think . . . there’d been so much . . . you must have known I . . .’ His voice trailed away, and he looked down at his feet.
I felt something touch me, pierce almost, the armour of indifference that the hurt of eight years back had shelled over me like nacre. It was not enough to have learned to live with the memory of his cruelty and indifference; I had still to care.
I said, hardly enough: ‘Adam, eight years ago, we quarrelled, because we were unhappy, and there was no future unless we did the sort of harm we had no right to do. I told you, I don’t want to go back over it. But you remember as well as I do, what was said.’
He said roughly: ‘Oh God, yes! Do you think I haven’t lived through every minute of that quarrel since? Every word, every look, every inflection? I know why you went! Even discounting Con and your grandfather, you’d reason enough! But I still can’t see why you ne
ver sent me a single word, even an angry one.’
This time the silence was stretched, like a shining thread that wouldn’t snap. The sun was strong now, and fell slanting over the eastward hedge to gild the tops of the grasses. Rowan rolled an eye at us, and moved further away. The tearing sound as he cropped the grass was loud in the early-morning stillness.
When I spoke, it was in a voice already heavy with knowledge; the instinct that sees pain falling like a shadow from the future. ‘But you had my letter.’
Before he spoke, I knew the answer. The truth was in his face. ‘Letter? What letter?’
‘I wrote from London,’ I said, ‘almost straight away.’
‘I got no letter.’ I saw him pass his tongue across his lips. ‘What did it . . . say?’
For eight years I had thought of what I would have liked to say. Now I only said, gently: ‘That if it would give you even a little happiness, I’d be your mistress, and go with you wherever you liked.’
The pain went across his face as if I had hit him. I saw him shut his eyes. He put up a hand to them; it was disfigured and ugly in the clear sunlight. He dropped it, and we looked at one another.
He said, quite simply, as if exhausted. ‘My dear. I never even saw it.’
‘I realise that now. I suppose I should have realised it then, when I got no answer. I should have known you’d not have done anything quite so cruel.’
‘Christ,’ he said, without violence, ‘I think you should.’
‘I’m sorry. It never even occurred to me that the letter might have gone astray. Letters don’t, as a rule. And I was so unhappy, and alone, and – and cut off . . . girls aren’t at their most sensible at such times. Adam, don’t look like that. It’s over now. I waited a few days; I – I suppose I’d really only gone to London to wait for you; I’d never intended, originally, to go abroad. But then, when I telephoned – did she tell you I’d telephoned?’ At his expression, I gave a little smile. ‘Yes, I telephoned you, too.’
‘Oh, my dear. And Crystal answered?’
‘Yes. I pretended it was a wrong number. I didn’t think she’d recognised my voice. I rang again next day, and Mrs Rudd answered it. She didn’t know who I was; she just told me the house was shut, and that you and Mrs Forrest had gone abroad, indefinitely. It was then that I – I decided to go right away. I went to a friend of mine who was emigrating. I had some money. I went along to look after her children, and – oh, the rest doesn’t matter. I didn’t write to you again. I – I couldn’t, could I?’
‘No.’ He was still looking like someone who has been mortally hurt, and hasn’t known it till he sees the blood draining away into the grass. ‘No wonder you said what you did, the other night. It seems there’s even more than I thought, to be laid at my door.’
‘You couldn’t help it, if a letter went astray! It was hardly – Adam!’
His eyes jerked up to mine. ‘What is it?’
I licked my lips, and said, hoarsely: ‘I wonder what did happen to that letter? We’re forgetting that. I said a minute ago, letters just don’t go astray, not as a rule, not for eight years. Do you suppose—’ I wet my lips again – ‘she took it?’
‘Crystal? How could – oh my God, no, surely? Don’t look like that, Annabel, the damned thing’s probably lying in some dusty dead-letter office somewhere on the Continent. No, my dear, she never knew. I’ll swear she never knew.’
‘Adam, you can’t be sure! If she did—’
‘I tell you she didn’t know! She never gave any sign of knowing! And I assure you, that if she could have found a whip like that to use on me, she’d have used it.’
‘But when she got so much worse—’
‘She was no worse than neurotic for years after you went away. It was only after the fire – after I’d taken her to Florence – that you could have called her really “mentally ill”, and I had to take her to Vienna. She never once, in all that time, mentioned any sort of suspicion of you.’
‘But, Adam, you don’t know—’
‘I know quite well. Stop this, Annabel!’
‘Adam, no one’s ever told me – how did Crystal die?’
He said harshly: ‘It was nothing to do with this. You can take my word for it. For one thing, no letter turned up among her papers after her death, and you can be sure she kept everything there was.’
I said: ‘Then she did kill herself?’
He seemed to stiffen himself like a man lifting a weight, only able by stark courage to hold it there. ‘Yes.’
Another of those silences. We were standing so still that a wren flew on to a hazel close beside me, chattered a stave of shrill and angry-sounding song, then flew away. I was thinking, without drama, well, here was the end of the chapter; all the threads tied up, the explanations made. There was nothing more to say. Better say goodbye, and go home to breakfast, before tragedy dissolved in embarrassment, and the lovers who had once been ready to count the world well lost, should find themselves talking about the weather.
The same thought showed momentarily in Adam’s face, and with it, a sort of stubborn resolution. He took a step forward, and the maimed hands moved.
I said: ‘Well, I’d better be getting back before Con sees I’ve been on Rowan.’
‘Annabel—’
‘Adam, don’t make me keep saying it’s finished.’
‘Don’t make me keep saying it isn’t! Why on earth d’you think I found myself trusting you against all reason and judgement, liking you – oh, God, more than liking you – if I hadn’t known in my blood who you really were, in spite of that bag of moonshine you handed to me so convincingly?’
‘I suppose because I was like her.’
‘Nonsense. Julie’s the image of what you were, as I knew you, and she never makes my heart miss a single beat. And tell me this, my dear dead love, why did you cry when you saw my hands?’
‘Adam, no, you’re not being fair!’
‘You care, don’t you? Still?’
‘I . . . don’t know. No. I can’t. Not now.’
He always had known what I was thinking. He said sharply: ‘Because of Crystal?’
‘We’ll never know, will we? It’d be there, between us, what we did.’
He said, grimly: ‘I could bear that. Believe me, I made my reparations.’ He turned his hands over, studying them. ‘And this was the least painful of them. Well, my dear, what do you want to do?’
‘I’ll go, of course. It won’t be long, you know. Grandfather’s looking desperately frail. Afterwards . . . afterwards, I’ll see things straight with Con, somehow, and then I’ll go. If he knows I’m leaving, there’ll be no danger for me. We needn’t meet, Adam.’
‘Neither we need.’
I turned away abruptly. ‘I’ll go now.’
‘Take your bridle.’
‘What? Oh, thanks. I’m sorry I spoiled your ride, Adam.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Rowan would much prefer it with you. I’ve a heavy hand.’
He picked his own bridle from the post, and heaved the saddle up over one arm. Then he smiled at me. ‘Don’t worry, my dear. I won’t get under your feet. But don’t go away again, without saying goodbye.’
‘Adam,’ I said desperately; ‘I can’t help it. I can’t help the way I feel. Life does just go on, and you change, and you can’t go back. You have to live it the way it comes. You know that.’
He said, not tragically, but as if finishing a quite ordinary conversation: ‘Yes, of course. But it would be very much easier to be dead. Goodbye.’
He let himself through the wicket, and went away across the field without looking back.
17
I lean’d my back unto an aik,
I thocht it was a trustie tree;
But first it bow’d and syne it brak –
Sae my true love did lichtlie me.
Ballad: Jamie Douglas.
Life goes on, I had told Adam. When I got back to the farm the men were arriving for the day, and the cattle were fil
ing into the byres. I managed to slip into the stables and hang the bridle up again without being seen, then went into the kitchen.
Mrs Bates was there, waiting for the kettle to boil. She cast me a look of surprise.
‘Why, Miss Annabel! You’re up early. Have you been out riding?’
‘No. I just couldn’t sleep.’
Her bright black eyes lingered on my face. ‘What’s to do now? You look proper poorly.’
‘I’m all right. I had a bad night, that’s all. I’d love a cup of tea.’
‘Hm.’ The piercing, kind little eyes surveyed me. ‘Piece o’ nonsense, getting up at all hours when you don’t have to. You want to take care o’ yersel’.’
‘Nonsense, Betsy, there’s nothing the matter with me.’
‘Never seen anything like you the day you came back.’ Here the kettle boiled, and she tipped it, dexterously jetting the boiling water into the teapot. ‘If you hadn’t ’a told me you was Miss Annabel, I’d hardly ’a knowd you, and that’s a fact. Aye, you can smile if you like, but that’s the truth and no lie. Depend on it, I says to Bates that night, depend on it, Miss Annabel’s had a bad time of it over in America, I says, and I’m not surprised, I says, judging by what you see on the pictures.’
‘It was Canada,’ I said mildly.
‘Well, they’re all the same, aren’t they?’ She slapped the teapot down on the table, which was laid ready for breakfast, whipped off the lid, and stirred the tea vigorously. ‘Not but what you look a lot better than what you did, and you’ve begun to put a bit of weight on, aye, and get some of your looks back, and I’m not the only one that’s noticed it. Have you noticed, says Bates to me the other day, that Miss Annabel’s almost her pretty self again when she smiles. Which isn’t often enough by a long chalk, I says. Well, he says, if she’d but get herself a husband and get herself settled, he says. Go on with you, I says, and her hardly home yet, give her time, I says, not but what men always thinks that’s all a woman needs in her life to make her happy, so no offence meant, but all the same, he says to me—’