The black Hunter

by Donnelly, Jane

  `Nippy this morning,' said Tommy `Christmas 'll be on us before we know it.' They both agreed with him and he sighed and grinned nostalgically. `Ah, we had some grand Christmasses here in the old days, didn't we, Miss Dora?'

  Dora's eyes lit with memories. 'Didn't we just?'

  Even that last Christmas there had been the tree and the trimmings and the guests. Laurence Holcroft had lived in style to the end.

  `It's a family house, is this,' Tommy had gone on, `needs children around. It's too big for a bachelor.' He had given Coll a sly grin and Coll had grinned back at him,

  'You think so?'

  Dora had dug her hands deep into her pockets. Tommy was hinting it was time that Coll married her. Tommy expected her and Coll to provide the family to fill the old house with laughter again, and there wasn't a chance, not a hope. Amusement and edgy antagonism were all they were ever likely to share.

  Coll would probably marry some time and his children would live here, tall and dark and beautiful and clever; and she would marry herself, she supposed. She supposed. She walked away from them and left them talking about the roof.

  Coll caught her a few minutes later in the kitchen

  and said, 'About Christmas. Tommy says you always had a Christmas party.'

  Coll had always come in the summer, he had never been here for Christmas, but he was here now and she was waiting for his orders. She said, 'We did.'

  'Let's do that,' he said. 'Could you manage it?' 'Of course.'

  'Right, I'll make a list of my guests and you and Thea and Simon ask who you want.'

  'Thank you,' she said. She didn't think Coll heard her. He was looking preoccupied; not worried, but as though he was planning, making decisions.

  Simon and Thea were delighted, Simon in particular. 'You've never seen the old house at its best,' he told Thea. 'We had terrific Christmasses, didn't we?'

  'Always,' said Dora.

  'A great big tree,' Simon went on. 'How about that, then?' to Kiki. 'Instead of that two-foot phoney in the box in the broom cupboard.'

  They usually had a family Christmas in the flat. It was always festive and fun, but this was going to be Christmas on the old scale and it was grand to phone up friends and invite them to the Manor for a Christmas Day party.

  Everyone accepted, there wasn't a refusal. 'How about Neil?' Simon suggested, fooling, and when Dora said,

  'Don't you dare, I'm going to have enough to do organising everything, I don't need any diversions,' he said, pretending to be impressed,

  'But of course, you're the hostess.'

  It looked like that. The local guests were her friends, but in fact she was not the hostess. She was the housekeeper, paid for what she was doing. She had to

  consult Coll and get his consent at every stage, and he seemed determined that everything should go smoothly and that the house should look as spectacular as possible.

  When guests had come down previously, usually for weekends, he had left everything to Dora, but this time he was carrying on as though it must all be perfect. As if this time he wanted to make an impression, and she wondered—on whom?

  But he gave her no clue until she handed over the guest lists. He hardly glanced at the names of her guests. 'Fine,' he said. But his guests—and there were a dozen of them—would all be staying for a couple of nights, several for longer, so Dora had had to give a lot of attention to their names.

  She had met them all but one, and that name headed Coll's list. Loretta Corbishley. She sat and looked at that for a while, and then she got on with the task of allotting bedrooms. She put Loretta, who wasn't paired off with anyone else, into the little room that used to be her own, and showed Coll the list that night.

  As he began to make changes she leaned over to see what they were. He was putting Loretta in the room next to his and Dora stood back, with folded arms, while he juggled with the rest. He had to alter a few, but where Loretta was sleeping was his main concern, and when he handed back the list Dora said casually, 'She hasn't been down here before, has she?'

  'No.' She waited and he said, 'We always spend

  Christmas together. Christmas is a special time for us.'

  She wanted to ask, 'Why?' but there was a note in

  his voice that was like tenderness, and there was a pain

  in her that was like jealousy, so that she couldn't trust herself to say anything.

  She felt she knew then who all the fuss was for. This house would be like a fairy palace on Christmas Day, and if Loretta Corbishley wasn't enchanted she was hard to please.

  They were getting in temporary staff over the holiday, which meant that Dora could sit down with the resident guests for Christmas lunch, there was a super buffet laid on for the party. When she asked Coll where he wanted everyone seated he suggested she or Thea took the seat at the bottom of the table, traditionally that of hostess, but the only place on which he had firm instructions was that Loretta Corbishley should sit next to him.

  Dora made no comment at all. She made a note, and then she made out the place names, and not even Thea knew that Coll had given any special orders about Miss-Corbishley.

  The preparations went on and Christmas was nearly here, with nobody talking about anything else. Mrs Heaton came downstairs the week before Christmas, smiling broadly, and took Dora on one side to whisper that she had seen Coll's present for Dora.

  She looked so impressed that it had to be something expensive, and Dora wished it wasn't. They owed him enough. She didn't want a pricey present, even if it was in the nature of a farewell gift because at the end of next month she would have reached her six-month target.

  She was rushing about a great deal, involving herself in every little detail of the future festivities, but she was feeling as flat as pond water. All the excitement

  was going over her head, and she longed for the whole thing to be over.

  It would take more than a present, no matter how splendid, to thrill her right now. She was tired, she supposed. Once she had got her six months over and done with she might take a holiday, and then another job away from here. She was feeling so depressed that she wondered if she might be heading for some sort of illness, she felt so sick of it all.

  But her present, when she got it, jolted her out of her inertia of spirit.

  A couple of nights before Christmas Eve Simon and Thea arrived with Coll's present. There would be a lot of gift exchanging later, and they felt that theirs would stand a better chance of appreciation if they handed it over early. They were proud of having found it, because it was a first edition of Dickens' Bleak House and Coll was delighted with it.

  Then he brought down their gifts. They were in the drawing room and Simon unwrapped a cashmere sweater, and Thea a beautifully embroidered shawl. There was a large box of gifts for Kiki's stocking, and Dora's was in a flat oblong leather box.

  She lifted the lid on a string of pearls and sat looking at them while Simon tried on his sweater and Thea paraded in her shawl. It was a finer string than her mother's pearls, but she knew they were what Coll was replacing, and she felt the blood draining out of her face as though she was looking at a ghost.

  They all seemed to be ghosts, she and Simon and Coll, and she was walking to a mirror, as she had done all those years ago, fumbling to fasten the pearls around her neck.

  She heard Thea gasp, 'Oh, Dora, they're beautiful ! '

  Dora's fingers trembled, she hadn't even thought to look how the fastener worked, and then Coll came up behind her and she felt his fingers against the nape of her neck, his breath on her cheek.

  This had happened before. The last time he had tried to fasten the pearls for her, when she was sixteen, and her heart had beat so loud she had thought he must hear it.

  He said, `To replace the ones you never found.'

  She couldn't turn to look at him. She could only look at him in the mirror, the proud hawk face; and inside her was a wild confusion as though she was sixteen again, afraid of her feelings, unsure what was h
appening to her, wishing that Simon would go away.

  Then she saw Simon's reflection. His face was scarlet, a picture of guilt and misery, and Thea walked in front of him, pretending to peer into the mirror too. 'I want to see how I look full length,' Thea said. There were long mirrors in the wardrobes in the bedrooms. She slipped her hand through Dora's arm and coaxed, 'Come and look at yourself full length in your pearls.'

  Dora went with her. She would have gone with any-one who took her hand, she was so shocked that for a moment she had no will of her own, but as they went into the first bedroom and Thea opened the wardrobe door Dora asked, 'How long have you known?'

  'That Simon took the pearls? Ever since you told me you'd lost them.'

  Neither girl was looking at her reflection. They were looking at each other, and without speaking Dora was asking—why?

  'He was a spender,' said Thea. 'He was a gambler when I first met him.' He didn't gamble now, but while he was at college it could. have been different.

  'Then suddenly he had enough to pay off a bookmaker who was pressing him,' said Thea. 'Just about the time you lost your pearls.'

  She pulled the shawl tighter Around her, her eyes pleading for understanding. 'When your father died in such terrible debt it was the shock that Simon needed. It made him pull himself together. It steadied him.'

  Thea's influence had probably done as much -as anything. Dora. had had no idea that Simon had needed money so badly—he hadn't confided in her as he had in Thea. She said, 'I'd have given them to him. He shouldn't have taken them. Not then. Not so that it looked as though it might have beep Coll.'

  He had timed it. He had thought that Coll was clearing off and they wouldn't be seeing him again for years. He shouldn't have done that, although he had tried to make Dora believe she had worn them and lost them.

  'No,' said Thea, in a very small voice.

  'Do you think Coll guessed?' Dora asked.

  'I guess so,' said Thea, and Dora laughed because she could have wept.

  'Coll can't have a very high opinion of either Simon or me, but I think he likes you.'

  'He likes us all,' said Thea.

  'Maybe.' Dora was far from convinced of that. 'If I was him I wouldn't,' she said, and Thea begged, 'Please don't say anything.'

  What would be the use now? No wonder Simon had never mentioned Coll in all these years, his conscience must still worry him. He must have been thankful that the subject-of the pearls—so far as he knew—had never come up again. He must have thought that Coll

  had gone away without hearing anything about them, and that Dora had forgotten them, or at any rate wasn't blaming anyone else for their loss.

  She put an arm around Thea and hugged her. 'I always knew you were the saving of Simon. It's lucky for him you're a one-man woman.'

  'And for me,' said Thea softly. 'It's better that way.'

  'I'm sure it is,' said Dora. If the man loved you ...

  Dora, didn't get much sleep that night. The pearls, and the moment when Coll put them around her neck, had unlocked the past. Now she really could remember how she had felt at sixteen.

  There had always been an awareness between herself and Coll that had expressed itself in conflict. But the last time he came, when she was sixteen, she had been ready to fall in love with him

  She had had crushes on boy-friends, slight cheerful things, but when Coll came that time she had been tongue-tied with a strange shyness. When he had touched her, trying to fasten her pearls, it had felt as though a hundred electric shocks were coursing through her. All she had wanted to do was turn to him and throw her arms around him.

  She had been an unsophisticated sixteen-year-old. She had got out of the room as fast as she could, and gone riding instead of going to the party. She had felt wild and free and strong and beautiful, while she was galloping over the heath, and her blood was singing. But when she came back she couldn't go into the room where Coll and Simon were talking together and music was playing.

  She had crept up to her own room, and stayed there as night came down. Perhaps Coll was staying the night, perhaps when everyone else was asleep he would

  tap on her door or throw gravel up to her window, and she would open the door or the window, and then he would tell her he had come to see her, not Simon. Perhaps he would kiss her and say he had thought about her often.

  But of course he didn't come, and she had tossed restless and fearful. She had wanted Coll and she had been afraid of wanting him, because it would be terrible if he laughed at her, she would die of shame.

  She was both child and woman that night, unprepared for the longings that were assailing her; but when morning came, cool and grey, she had reminded herself how little she knew of him. It was years since they had seen him, and this time he had hardly spoken to her, or looked at her except when he tried to fasten her pearls.

  He had looked at her pearls as though they were beautiful, but not at her, and she had gone downstairs for a glass of milk and her pearls weren't where she had left them.

  She had remembered again how Coll had looked at them, and when Simon had said he had gone, and he wasn't coming back, she had been sick at the thought that he might have taken them. She had run all the way to the Fleece, and he had stared at her with eyes as narrow as the eyes in a mask, and when she had said, 'You wouldn't have picked up my pearls last night, would you?' he had grinned and said, 'Prove it.'

  She had despised herself then, remembering her dreams of the night before. She had wanted to hit out at him, to scream at him. She had thought she hated him and would always hate him. But ever since, some part of her, deep down, had been measuring every man she met against him. That was why she couldn't

  give herself completely, because they weren't Coll. She had been waiting for Coll, and she might have gone on waiting for the rest of her life.

  She might have decided she was frigid, a loner. Well, she knew now that she was neither, but knowing herself was going to make life no easier when Loretta Corbishley came at Christmas, sitting by Coll at the table, sleeping in the room next to his.

  The days were going to be grim enough, but the nights—when Dora was lying alone in her cold little house, seeing them in her mind, seeing everything through the long sleepless hours—would be infinitely worse.

  Next day the Christmas rush went on. The tree was in the hall now and it would take most of the morning to dress it. There were boxes of trimmings, and with the aid of a high stepladder Dora was transforming its dark green branches into a bright and glittering spectacle.

  She was unravelling tinsel when Mrs Heaton came into the hall. 'It's going to be pretty,' said Mrs Heaton, admiring the tree. 'This is going to be a red-letter Christmas, isn't it?' She smiled as though she and Dora shared a secret, and dropped her voice although nobody else was about. 'When you get your present from the master.'

  'I had it last night,' said Dora, and Mrs Heaton's secret smile widened.

  'You did?' Oh ... but you're not wearing it.' She sounded disappointed, looking at Dora's left hand, then she whispered again, 'Saving it for Christmas Day? I won't tell anyone. I'm not supposed to know, but when I saw the little box on his dressing table I couldn't resist taking a little peep.' She sighed ecstatic-

  ally. 'My, but it is a beautiful ring!'

  She went on her way, upstairs, and Dora stood, stunned. Then she dropped the tinsel back in the box and went into the library, closing the door and sitting at the desk that was covered with lists and notes and Christmas wrapping paper.

  A ring! A beautiful ring! For Loretta, of course. On Christmas Day, when the house was at its beautiful best and the party was laid on, Loretta would be beside Coll, wearing his ring.

  He should have told her. He should have warned her. Everyone she and Simon had invited thought that Dora and Coll were lovers, that the Manor was Dora's home again. If Coll had wanted to hurt her pride this should do it. No matter how she protested that she didn't care they would always believe that she had been jilted in
her turn, and the ones who remembered Peter, and the wedding she had called off at the last minute, might say she knew now how it felt.

  And she did, she did. She hoped with all her heart that Peter hadn't cared for her as she cared for Coll, because it was like no other pain on earth. It didn't matter who laughed at her or pitied her, that wasn't why she felt as though she was sitting here slowly dying.

  It was because she knew now that she would never belong to Coll, nor he to her. He was going away again, as far as he could go although he would still be living in this house.

  She wondered, for about the hundredth time, what Loretta Corbishley was like. Coll had mentioned a girl who looked something like Dora. Perhaps she would see someone who looked like herself living here with

  Coll, sharing the children. Coll's children and someone else's.

  She felt as though her own children had been torn away from her, as though all her future had been laid barren because her future should have been Coll. Whether he wanted her or not, and he didn't, she was inextricably bound to him, and he must never know that. Nobody must ever know.

  Christmas was a special time for him and Loretta. 'We always spend Christmas together,' he had said. Perhaps they had first met at Christmas, and this Christmas he was asking her to marry him.

  That was why everything had to be perfect, why he had seemed on edge lately. Perhaps he wasn't certain she would accept him, but she would. 'Dora was as sure of that as she was sure that she herself wouldn't be around to see it.

  Everything was organised down to the last detail, so that Dora could be free over the holiday to enjoy herself like the other guests. Enjoy herself? It would be murder. She would be dying the death of a thousand cuts. Oh no! Oh no, no, no.

  They would all guess why she wasn't around, but she would handle that when she came back. When the engagement was a few days old and less of a thrilling, exciting surprise she would face them all and smile, and not cry in front of anyone, except Thea perhaps. But today she couldn't even tell Thea.