by Mary Stewart
I said abruptly: ‘I’ll go and get Con.’
The sun beat heavy and hot on High Riggs. A third of the field was shorn, close and green-gold and sweet smelling. Over the rest of the wide acreage the hay stood thick and still in the heat. The clover, and the plumy tops of the grasses made shadows of lilac and madder and bronze across the gilt of the hay. There were purple vetches along the ditch, and the splashing yellow of ladies’ slipper.
One tractor was at the far end of the field, with Con driving. It was moving away from me, the blades of the cutter flashing in the sun.
I began to run towards him along the edge of the cut hay. The men with rakes paused to look up at me. The cutter was turning, out from the standing hay, round, and in once more in a close circle, neatly feathering its corner and re-entering the standing hay at an exact right-angle.
Con hadn’t seen me. He was watching the track of the blades, but as the machine came into the straight, he glanced up ahead of him, and then lifted a hand. I stopped where I was, gasping in the heavy heat.
The tractor was coming fairly fast. Con, not apparently seeing in my visit anything out of the way, was watching the blades again. The sun glinted on the dark hair, the handsome, half-averted profile, the sinewy brown arms. He looked remote, absorbed, grave. I remember that I thought with a kind of irrelevant surprise, he looks happy.
Then I had stepped out of his path, and, as the tractor came level with me, I shouted above the noise of the motor: ‘Con! You’d better come to the house! It’s Grandfather!’
The tractor stopped with a jerk that shook and rattled the cutter-blades. The boy on the reaper hauled on the lever and they lifted, the hot light quivering on the steel. Con switched off the motor, and the silence came at us with a rush.
‘What is it?’
I said, shouting, then lowering my voice as it hit the silence: ‘It’s Grandfather. He’s taken ill. You have to come.’
I saw something come and go in his face, then it was still again, but no longer remote. It had gone blank, but it was as if something in him was holding its breath, in a sort of wary eagerness; there was a tautness along the upper lip, and the nostrils were slightly flared. A hunter’s face.
He drew a little breath, and turned his head to the boy. ‘Uncouple her, Jim. I’m going down to the house. Ted!’ The farm foreman came across, not hurrying, but with a curious look at me. ‘Ted, Mr Winslow’s ill. I’m going down now, and I may not get back today. Carry on, will you?’ A few more hurried instructions, and his hand went to the starter. ‘Oh, and send one of the boys across to open that gate for the doctor’s car. Jim, get up on the tractor here, then you can drive it back. I’ll send news up with Jim, Ted, as soon as I see how he is.’
As the boy obeyed, swinging up behind him, Con started the motor. He gestured with a jerk of the head to me, and I ran round and stepped up on to the back of the tractor. It went forward with a lurch, and then turned sharply away from the ridge of cut hay, and bucketed down across the uneven ground towards the gate. The men paused in their raking to watch curiously, but Con took no notice. He sent the tractor over the grid with hardly any diminution of speed. I was close beside him, standing on the bars and holding on to the high mudguard. He began to whistle between his teeth, a hissing little noise that sounded exactly what it was, a valve blowing down a head of steam. I think I hated Con then, more than I ever had before: more than when he had tried to bully me into marrying him: more than when I had wrenched away from him and run, bruised and terrified, to Grandfather: more than when he had tried to claim Adam’s place as my lover, and told the stupid lie about the child: more than when he had brought me back, an interloper, to damage Julie.
He said nothing until we were getting down from the tractor in the yard.
‘By the way, wasn’t there something you wanted to talk to me about? What was it?’
‘It’ll keep,’ I said.
Grandfather was still unconscious. The doctor had come, stayed, and then, towards evening, had gone again to a telephone summons. This was the number . . . we were to call him back, if there was any change . . . but he was afraid, Miss Winslow, Miss Dermott, he was very much afraid . . .
He lay on his back, propped on pillows, breathing heavily, and with apparent difficulty, and sometimes the breath came in a long, heaving sigh. Now and again there seemed a pause in the breathing, and then my heart would jerk and stop as if in sympathy, to resume its erratic beating when the difficult breaths began again . . .
I hadn’t left him. I had pulled a chair up to one side of his bed. Con was on the other. He had spent the afternoon alternately in sitting still as a stone, with his eyes on the old man’s face, or else in fits of restless prowling, silent, like a cat, which I had stood till I could stand it no longer, then had curtly told him to go out of the room unless he could keep still. He had shot me a quick look of surprise, which had turned to a lingering one of appraisement, then he had gone, but only to return after an hour or so, to sit on the other side of the old man’s bed, waiting. And that look came again, and yet again, as the blue eyes kept coming back to my face. I didn’t care. I felt so tired that emotion of any kind would have been an exercise as impossible as running to a wounded man. Heaven knows what was showing in my face. I had ceased to try to hide it from Con, and I could not, today, find it in me to care . . .
And so the day wore on. Lisa, quiet and efficient as ever, came in and out, and helped me to do what was needed. Mrs Bates finished her work, but offered to stay for a time, and the offer was gladly accepted. Julie hadn’t come home. After the doctor’s visit, Con went out and sent one of the men up in the car to West Woodburn, but on his return he reported that neither Julie nor Donald had been seen at the site since that morning. They had gone up there some time before luncheon, had walked around for a bit, then had gone off in Donald’s car. Nobody had any idea where they had gone. If it was into Newcastle—
‘Forrest Hall!’ I said. ‘That’s where they’ll be! I’m sorry, Con, I’d quite forgotten.’ I explained quickly about the alleged Roman carving that Adam had described. ‘Ask him to go to Forrest Hall – he’d better go by the river-path, it’s quicker than taking a car up past the gates.’
But the man, when he returned, had found nobody. Yes, he had found the cellars; they were accessible enough, and he thought someone had been there recently, probably today, but no one was there now. Yes, he had been right down. And there was no car parked there; he couldn’t have failed to see that. Should he try West Lodge? Or Nether Shields?
‘The telephone’s easier,’ said Con.
But the telephone was no help, either. West Lodge was sorry, but Mr Forrest was out, and had not said when he would be back. Nether Shields – with a shade of reserve – was sorry, too; no, Julie had not been there that day; yes, thank you, Bill was quite all right; they were sorry to hear about Mr Winslow; sorry, sorry, sorry . . .
‘We’ll have to leave it,’ I said wearily. ‘It’s no use. They may have found something at Forrest, and all gone into Newcastle to look it up, or something; or Julie and Donald may have gone off on their own after they left Forrest Hall. But it’s only an hour to supper time now, and surely they’ll come then? After last night – was it really only last night? – Julie surely won’t stay away again without letting us know?’
‘Do you know, you sound really worried,’ said Con.
I said: ‘My God, what do you think—?’ then looked up and met the blue eyes across the bed where Grandfather lay. They were bright and very intent. I said shortly: ‘Oddly enough, I am. I’m thinking of Julie. She would want to be here.’
His teeth showed briefly. ‘I always did say you were a nice girl.’
I didn’t answer.
The doctor came back just before seven, stayed a while, then went again. The day drew down, the sky dark as slate, heavy with thunder, and threatening rain.
Still Julie didn’t come, and still Grandfather lay there, with no change apparent in the mask-like face,
except that I thought the nostrils looked pinched, and narrower, and his breathing seemed more shallow.
Con went over to the buildings shortly after the doctor had gone, and only then, leaving Mrs Bates in Grandfather’s room, did I go downstairs for a short time, while Lisa gave me soup, and something to eat.
Then I went back, to sit there, waiting, and watching the old man’s face, and trying not to think.
And, well within the hour, Con was back there, too, on the other side of the bed, watching me.
Mrs Bates went at eight, and soon afterwards, the rain began; big, single heavy drops at first, splashing down on the stones, then all at once in sheets, real thunder-rain, flung down wholesale from celestial buckets, streaming down the windows as thickly as gelatine. Then suddenly, the room was lit by a flash, another, and the thunderstorm was with us; long flickering flashes of lightning, and drum-rolls of thunder getting nearer; a summer storm, savage and heavy and soon to pass.
I went over to shut the windows, and remained there for a few moments, staring out through the shining plastic curtain of the rain. I could barely see as far as the buildings. In the frequent flashes the rain shimmered in vertical steel rods, and the ground streamed and bubbled with the water that fell too fast for the gutters to take it.
Still no Julie. They wouldn’t come now. They would stay and shelter till it was past. And meanwhile Grandfather . . .
I drew the thick chintz curtains and came back to the bed. I switched on the bedside lamp and turned it away, so that no light fell on the old man’s face. Con, I saw, was watching him abstractedly, with a deep frown between his brows. He said under his breath: ‘Listen to that, damn it to hell, It’s enough to wake the dead.’
I was just going to say, ‘Don’t worry, it won’t disturb him,’ when Con added: ‘It’ll have the rest of High Riggs as flat as coconut matting. We’ll never get the cutter into it after this.’
I said drily: ‘No, I suppose not,’ and then, sharply, all else forgotten: ‘Con! It has woken him!’
Grandfather stirred, sighed, gave an odd little snore, and then opened his eyes. After a long time they seemed to focus, and he spoke without moving his head. The sounds he made were blurred, but clear enough.
‘Annabel?’
‘I’m here, Grandfather.’
A pause. ‘Annabel?’
I leaned forward into the pool of light, and slid a hand under the edge of the bedclothes till it found his.
‘Yes, Grandfather. I’m here. It’s Annabel.’
There was no movement in the fingers under mine, no perceptible expression in Grandfather’s face, but I thought, somehow, that he had relaxed. I felt his fingers, thin and frail, as smooth and dry as jointed bamboo, and no more living, lying in my palm, and remembered him as he had been in my girlhood, a tall, powerful man, lean and whippy, and tyrannical, and as proud as fire. And suddenly it was too much, this slow, painful ending to the day. A day that had begun with Rowan, and the brilliant morning, and a secret that was still my own; then Adam, and the knowledge of our betrayal of each other; and now this . . .
The storm was coming nearer. Lightning played for seconds at a time, flashing like some dramatically wheeling spotlight against the shut curtains. I saw Grandfather’s eyes recognise it for what it was, and said: ‘It’s just a summer thunderstorm. I don’t suppose it’ll last.’
‘That noise. Rain?’
The thunder had paused. In the interval the rain came down with the noise of a waterfall. ‘Yes.’
I saw his brows twitch, very faintly. ‘It’ll flatten – High Riggs.’
Something touched me that was partly wonder, and partly a sort of shame. Con was a Winslow after all, and perhaps his reaction had been truer than mine – my dumb fury of grief that was a grief for the passing of, not this old man, but my world, the world I hadn’t wanted, and deserved to lose. I said: ‘That’s just what Con was saying.’
‘Con?’
I nodded towards him. ‘He’s there.’
The eyes moved. ‘Con.’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m – ill.’
‘Yes,’ said Con.
‘Dying?’
‘Yes,’ said Con.
I felt my lips part in a sort of gasp of protest and shock, but what I might have said was stopped by Grandfather’s smile. It wasn’t even the ghost of his old grin, it was nothing but the slight tightening and slackening of a muscle at the corner of his mouth; but I knew then that Con was right. Whatever had been Matthew Winslow’s faults, he had never lacked dignity, and he was not the man to slide out of life on a soothing flood of women’s lies. He and Con had ground where they could meet, and which was forbidden to me.
My moment of protest must have communicated itself to him through our linked hands, for his eyes moved back to me, and I thought he said: ‘No lies.’
I didn’t look at Con. ‘All right, Grandfather, no lies.’
‘Julie?’
‘She’ll be here soon. The storm’s kept her. She’s been out with Donald all day. She doesn’t know you’re ill.’
I thought he looked a query.
‘You remember Donald, darling. The Scot, Donald Seton. He’s the archaeologist digging up at West Woodburn. He was here last night at—’ my voice wavered, but I managed it – ‘your party.’
I could see him concentrating, but it seemed to elude him. I had to control myself sharply, not to take a tighter hold on the frail hand in mine. I leaned nearer to him, speaking slowly, and as distinctly as I could. ‘You met Donald, and you liked him. He’s going to marry Julie, and they’ll live in London. Julie’ll be very happy with him. She loves him. You needn’t worry about—’
An appalling crash interrupted me. The flash, the long, growing rumble and crack of chaos, then, after it, the crash. Through all the other preoccupations in that dim room it hacked like the noise of a battleaxe.
Matthew Winslow said: ‘What’s that?’ in a voice that was startled almost back to normal.
Con was at the window, pulling back the curtains. His movements were full of a suppressed nervous excitement, which gave them more than their usual grace, like the sinewy, controlled actions of ballet. He came back to the bedside, and bent over his great-uncle. ‘It was a long way off. A tree, I’m pretty, sure, but not here. One of the Forrest Hall trees, I’d say.’
He put a hand on the bed, where Grandfather’s arm lay under the blankets, and added carefully and distinctly: ‘You don’t need to worry. I’ll go out presently and find out where it was. But it’s not near the buildings. And the lights are still on, you can see that. It’s done no damage here.’
Grandfather said, clearly: ‘You’re a good boy, Con. It’s a pity Annabel never came home. You’d have suited well together.’
I said: ‘Grandfather—’ and then stopped.
As I put my face down against the bedclothes, to hide it from him, I saw that Con had lifted his head once more and was watching me, his eyes narrow and appraising.
There was only myself and Con in the room.
18
Nor man nor horse can go ower Tyne,
Except it were a horse of tree . . .
Ballad: Jock o’ the Side.
It seemed a very long time before Con cleared his throat to speak.
I didn’t raise my head. I could feel his scrutiny, and even through the first rush of grief, the instinct that I had been rash enough to disregard, bade me hide my tears from him. I don’t think I had any room, then, for conscious thought about the present danger of my position: the way my stupid, difficult safeguard against him had now become, ironically, a peril. I had known since yesterday that I would have to tell him the truth. To have discussed it today, across Grandfather’s unconscious body, would have been unthinkable, like counting him already dead. And now, even if I had been ready to frame what I had to say, it was even less possible to do so.
I never knew what he was going to say. Somewhere, downstairs, a door slammed, and there were running footsteps.
He checked himself, listening. I remember thinking, vaguely, that perhaps Lisa had somehow guessed what had happened. But would she have run like that? I had never seen Lisa hurry . . . somehow it seemed unlike her, even if she had cared enough . . .
Julie: of course, it must be Julie. I pressed my fists hard against my temples, and tried to blot the tears off against the counterpane, steadying my thoughts as best I could. Julie was coming running, just too late, and in a moment I would have to lift my face . . .
The steps clattered across the hall, seemed to trip at the bottom stair, then came on up, fast. Even through the thick panels of the door I could hear the hurry of sobbing breathing. She grabbed the knob with fumbling hands. It shook even as it turned.
I lifted my head sharply. There were still tears on my face, but I couldn’t help that now. Here was something more. And Con had taken his eyes off me at last, and was watching the door.
It was thrust open – no sick-room entry, this – and Julie ran into the room.
She must have come in so quickly from the dark and streaming night that her eyes had barely adjusted themselves to the light. I thought for a moment that she was going to blunder straight into the bed, and came to my feet in a startled movement of protest; but she stopped just short of the bed’s foot, gasping for breath.
I had been right in my swift guess: this panic-stricken haste had had nothing to do with Grandfather. She hadn’t even glanced at the bed. Her look was wild, dazed almost, and she groped for a chair back, to which she clung as if that alone prevented her from falling.
Her hair, and the coat she wore, were soaked, so dark with rain that it took me a moment or two to realise, in that dim light, that the coat was streaked and filthy. The gay summer sandals were filthy, too, and there was dirt splashed over her hands and wrists, and smudged across her jawbone. The flush of haste stood out on her cheeks like paint.