by Mary Stewart
She stood there on the wall-top, staring down at it. It was dirty, and stained, and a little ragged at the edges, but dry.
I said curiously: ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a – a letter.’
‘Julie! It can’t be! Nobody else—’ My voice trailed away.
She came down from the wall, and held it out to me.
I took it, glanced down unbelievingly at it, then stood staring, while the writing on it swam and danced in front of me. It was young, hurried-looking writing, and even through the blurred, barely legible ink, and the dirt and mould on the paper, I could see the urgency that had driven the pen. And I knew what the illegible letters said.
‘Adam Forrest, Esq.,
Forrest Hall,
Nr. Bellingham,
Northumberland.’
And the blur across the top said: ‘Private.’
I became conscious that Julie was speaking.
‘ . . . And I met the post-woman at the top of the road. You remember her, old Annie? She retired that year. She gave me the Whitescar letters, and I brought them down for her. She shouldn’t have done it, but you know how she used to, to save herself the long trail . . . Well, I’d seen you and Adam putting notes in the ivy tree, and I suppose, being a kid, I thought it was quite the natural thing to do . . .’ Her voice wavered; I realised that I had turned and was staring at her. ‘So I put that one in the ivy tree. I remember now. I never thought another thing about it. I – I climbed up on the wall and shoved it in as far as it would go.’
I said: ‘And of course, once he knew I’d gone, he’d never have looked in there again.’
‘Of course not. Annabel—’
‘Yes?’
‘Was it – do you suppose it was a particularly important letter?’
I looked down at the letter in my hand, then up at the ivy tree, where it had lain for eight years. If it had reached him, all that time ago, what would have happened? His wife ill, and heading towards complete breakdown, himself wretched, and an unhappy young girl throwing herself on his mercy and his conscience? Who was to say that it had not been better like this? The time we had lost had, most of it, not been our time. The ivy tree, that ‘symbol’, as I had called it, of deceit, had held us apart until our time was our own, and clear . . .
Julie was watching me anxiously. ‘I suppose it might have been important?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘I – I’d better give it to him, and tell him, I suppose.’
I smiled at her then. ‘I’m meeting him this evening. I’ll give it to him myself.’
‘Oh, would you?’ said Julie, thankfully. ‘Tell him I’m terribly sorry, and I hope it wasn’t anything that mattered!’
‘Even if it was,’ I said, ‘it can hardly matter now.’
I might have been alone in a painted landscape.
The sky was still, and had that lovely deepening blue of early evening. The high, piled clouds over to the south seemed to hang without movement. Against their curded bases the fells curved and folded, smooth slopes of pasture, fresh from last night’s rain, and golden-green in the late sunlight.
The blocks of the Roman-cut stone were warm against my back. Below me the lough dreamed and ruffled, unchanged since the day I had first sat there. Two black-faced lambs slept in the sun; the same two, it seemed, that had lain there eight years ago, when it had all begun . . .
Time was. Time is . . .
I sat there, eyes shut, and remembered, in the warm green-and-blue silence. Not a lamb called; the curlews were silent; there was no breeze to stir the grasses, and the bees had gone home from the thyme. It might have been the world before life began, and I might have been the first and only woman in it, sitting there dreaming with Adam . . .
‘Annabel.’
Though I had been waiting, I hadn’t heard him approach. He had come quietly along the turf to the south of the Wall. He was standing close behind me. The lambs, sleepy eyed, had not even raised their heads.
I didn’t turn. I put up a hand, and when his closed over it, I drew the scarred back of it down against my cheek, and held it there.
Time is to come . . .
About the Author
Mary Stewart, one of the most popular novelists, was born in Sunderland, County Durham and lives in the West Highlands. Her first novel, Madam, Will You Talk?, was published in 1955 and marked the beginning of a long and acclaimed writing career. All her novels have been bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. She was made a Doctor of Literature by Durham University in 2009.
Also by Mary Stewart
Madam, Will You Talk?
Wildfire at Midnight
Thunder on the Right
Nine Coaches Waiting
My Brother Michael
The Moonspinners
This Rough Magic
Airs Above the Ground
The Gabriel Hounds
Touch Not the Cat
Thornyhold
Stormy Petrel
Rose Cottage
THE ARTHURIAN NOVELS
The Crystal Cave
The Hollow Hills
The Last Enchantment
The Wicked Day
The Prince and the Pilgrim
POEMS
Frost on the Window
FOR CHILDREN
The Little Broomstick
Ludo and the Star Horse
A Walk in Wolf Wood