Green Girl

by Sara Seale

  “But you’ll come back?”

  “Of course I’ll come back. I’ve made Clooney my headquarters ever since I started out on the boards.”

  “Dear Rory! You don’t take a livelihood very seriously, do you?”

  “Dear Harriet, I try not to take anything very seriously, that’s why I think it’s time to go.”

  She sat on the floor beside her dog, twisting the hair on his shaggy head into aimless little spikes, and looked up at Rory with wide, enquiring eyes.

  “Meaning?” she said.

  “Meaning, my incorrigible innocent, if you must have your i’s dotted and your t’s crossed, that I find myself in danger of getting a little too fond of you, so it’s better to take off before any more damage is done,” he said. “You’ve been a sore temptation to me, Harriet.”

  “Have I?”

  “Yes, you have. Well, perhaps I’ve served my purpose in arousing a fine spark of jealousy in your too-forebearing husband’s heart.”

  “Jealous—Duff?”

  He sighed, with a shade of impatience.

  “For heaven’s sake! Surely even you can tell the signs!” he exclaimed, and she looked quickly down at the dog, ruffling the hair back into place.

  “Pride can be stung to anger—jealousy of a kind, perhaps —but if it was anything else, you’d think—you’d think that if one offered—” she had not meant to confide that last humiliation, but the thought that Rory might so soon be gone betrayed her into weakness. His eyes were amused, however, rather than compassionate as he replied:

  “So you made your timid little overtures of submission to turn away wrath—last night, one presumes—and think yourself rejected because you have a husband who wants something more than the cold comfort of gratitude to charity.”

  Harriet looked up, shaking the hair out of her eyes impatiently.

  “That’s what he said—gratitude’s a lean substitute for love—but he’s never wanted love.”

  “Who’s to know what anyone means by that? Love has so many forms—so many disguises if it comes to that. I don’t pretend to understand my self-contained cousin because he’s never-allowed that I’m mature enough to discuss such things as matter to him, but I’m beginning to suspect the poor devil’s a romantic at heart—one of these out-of-date chivalrous characters who bide their time too long for a worn-out principle and get beaten at the post in the end by a more enterprising nag. That’s what stirred up his bitterness yesterday—not the dog-in-the-manger pride you attributed to him.”

  She listened attentively, torn between a desire to believe what she wanted and the salutary reminder that she too easily wove fantasies for herself without foundation.

  “And Samantha?” she said at last. “Where does she come in?”

  “Where she belongs. A high-class floozie of his bachelor days who came back to make trouble. Sam’s always wanted what she couldn’t get, and if she can’t get it she just goes destructive for spite.”

  “Men like to keep their wives and mistresses apart. You heard him say he doesn’t want me to see her again.”

  “And that should show you, you silly coot. She’s had the run of the place up till now, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes, but I think he’s reached some sort of decision. He’s meeting her in Dublin.”

  “So what? Oh, for God’s sake, Harriet, let’s drop the whole subject! Sometimes I think you make surmises and difficulties where none exist, at others I simply shrug my shoulders and say you’re both getting what you deserve from such a cockeyed bargain. Now, for the love of Mike, let’s talk about something else! You’re getting my dim powers of reasoning in as bad a state as your own!”

  There was a slight fall of snow during the night, which moved Duff to say:

  “You’ll be careful while I’m gone, won’t you, Harriet? Don’t go falling into bogs or anything rash.”

  “Are you going soon, then?”

  “The day after tomorrow. Rory’s coming with me.”

  “Oh!” She had a cold feeling of desertion, envisaging the Castle with only Nonie and her own discouraging thoughts to keep her company, and watching those betraying freckles beginning to powder her skin as she lost colour, he said a little roughly:

  “Is it Rory you’re going to miss?”

  “I’ll miss him, of course, Clooney will seem very quiet without him,” she answered truthfully, then added, because she had to know before he went away, leaving her with that voiceless question unanswered. “Duff—did you really think that—that Rory and I—” she broke off awkwardly, and he finished the sentence for her quite gently.

  “Were lovers? No, Harriet, if that brings you any comfort. One can sometimes whip oneself into a state of belief—from various causes—bitterness, hurt pride, even a sense of failure in oneself. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes,” she said, and the colour began coming back into her face. “I’m glad, Duff. I wouldn’t have liked you to think I’d repaid your generosity with—with a betrayal.”

  She had tried to choose her words carefully, not wanting to burden him with a fresh sense of failure by reminding him that in the end he had refused the only gift she had to offer, hoping just the same for a crumb of solace even though it might only be an acknowledgement of good faith, but he seemed to withdraw again.

  “No, I don’t think you would. Your insistence on the obligations laid upon gratitude are doubtless very worthy, but to be regarded as a charitable institution can become irksome,” he replied with some dryness.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” she said a little blankly, not very sure what he meant, but aware that she had somehow said the wrong thing again. “Will you be back for New Year’s Eve?”

  “Is that another of your hallowed occasions?” he asked, and she thought he was laughing at her for a childish insistence on the importance of occasions which no longer mattered very much to him.

  “Not hallowed like Christmas,” she answered with grave consideration, “but the start of another year is sort of clean and fresh and young. You can put away the mistakes and disappointments of the old year and start again.”

  “So you can,” he said, and his voice had softened. “And you think that you and I, by seeing in the New Year together with faith in our hearts, could call down a blessing and start again?”

  “We could at least call down a blessing,” she said, still not at all certain of his mood, and he ran a hand over her smooth head, twisting and untwisting a strand of hair round his finger to feel the texture.

  “Very well,” he said, “I will be back on New Year’s Eve without fail, and that’s a promise. Are you still expecting unlikely miracles, Harriet?”

  “Miracles needn’t be unlikely if you believe enough,” she said gently. “Someone said—St. Augustine, I think—what is faith unless it is to believe what you do not see?”

  “Yes ... yes ... Perhaps some of that faith of yours will rub off on me,” he said slowly, then the twinkle was back in his eye. “Did they stuff you with lives of the saints as well as other things?”

  “Oh, yes—martyrs, too, but I didn’t care much for them, all stuck with arrows and things and carrying their eyes about on plates,” she said quite seriously, and he burst out laughing.

  “What macabre reading! Who carried their eyes about on plates?”

  “I don’t remember,” she replied vaguely. “I could never really do with martyrs—they so enjoyed their misfortunes.”

  “And you don’t enjoy yours?”

  “My misfortunes aren’t at all the same,” she replied rather primly, and ducked under his arm and ran out of the room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ALL day the sullen skies threatened, sending down a few half-hearted flakes which melted into fresh puddles before they froze, but by nightfall it was snowing in earnest and Harriet’s spirits rose with happy visions of snowmen and toboggans, skating on the frozen lough and all the merry, old-fashioned clichés she had wanted for Christmas.

  They all went out after brea
kfast to throw snowballs and laugh at the delirious antics of the dogs, or rather Uriah, for the two Alsatians executing turns and arabesques in the snow were patterns of grace and delight to watch, but poor Uriah on his short, bandy legs, soon became submerged in the smallest of drifts, and sat with only his head above surface, gazing at them reproachfully from under his shaggy brows.

  “Never mind, my poor lamb!” Harriet said remorsefully as she dug him out yet again, but he was offended and, his tail tucked down, trotted back to the house where she found him later sitting on Kurt’s blanket in the snug. She knelt down to make a fuss of him, but he was staring at her with such a curious expression that she sat back on her heels, hesitating for a moment to touch him. Those soft, beseeching eyes had such a strange look of sad knowledge, of acceptance, that she had an odd little frisson of fear. He sat so still and regarded her so steadily that it almost seemed as though he was communicating some message, then she gathered him into her arms to comfort his hurt feelings and tears of relief and remorse pricked her eyelids as she felt his warm eager tongue licking her face accompanied by the customary little whines of pleasure with which he always rewarded her attentions.

  “What’s the matter, Princess?” Rory said, coming into the room with Duff for the pre-luncheon sherry. “Something upset you?”

  She smiled up at him, brushing the tears from her lashes. “It’s nothing—I just got a funny feeling about Uriah,” she said.

  “What sort of funny feeling?”

  “I don’t know. He had a queer kind of look.”

  “Well, let’s face it, sweetie, he’s a queer kind of dog.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. It’s difficult to explain. I expect it was really only my own conscience pricking for having made fun of him.”

  “All dogs hate being laughed at,” Duff said, holding out a glass of sherry to her. “Stop nursing the disreputable tyke and take your drink.”

  But she did not want to let the dog go just yet and had failed for once to catch the little rasp of irritation in Duff’s voice.

  “Put it down somewhere, I’ll have it later,” she said, and he put the glass down on a table too sharply, spilling a little of the wine.

  “You’re making a fool of the animal,” he said as he mopped up the sherry with his handkerchief. “Well, at least get up off the floor and let Kurt have his blanket.”

  This time she heard the warning note and scrambled to her feet, chivvying Uriah off the blanket and calling to Kurt, but Uriah sat where he was, then rolled on his back, grinning at them. Kurt approached the blanket dignified and beautiful, the tip of his plumed tail moving in gracious acknowledgement as he passed Harriet, then he stood stock still and the hairs rose along his back. Harriet’s heart dropped. The Alsatian had ignored Uriah since the day of his arrival, but he had never attempted to start a scrap, and if he did so now, she thought, it would put the finishing touch to Duff’s apparent ill-humour.

  “Kurt ... here, boy ...” she said softly, but he took no notice of her, and stood there stiff and still, his head thrust forward, his ruff fanned out, staring at Uriah, and she could see the quiver in his throat which was the prelude to growling. It was not a growl he uttered, however, but that small, piping whine peculiar to his breed which could mean distress, or affection or a plea for attention, but never hostility. Kurt then did a thing he had never done before, he nuzzled the wriggling Uriah, smelling him all over with delicate questing thrusts from his long muzzle, then he licked his face with one sweeping curl of the tongue and lay down beside him.

  “Duff, did you see?” Harriet said, her eyes suddenly enormous in her anxious face.

  “See what?” Duff, who had still been mopping up the spilt sherry, returned his handkerchief to his pocket and looked round.

  “Kurt. He sort of spoke to Uriah, then kissed him and lay down beside him. He’s never done that before.”

  “Well, it shows a nice, unselfish nature, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t get many dogs willing to share their recognised possessions with interlopers. Why make a sentimental fantasy out of it? Kissing—really!”

  Harriet went to the table to take up her glass, and stood with her back to him.

  “Interlopers—intruders—words you’re rather too fond of, Duff,” she said, surprised by the sudden bitterness which had welled up in her. “I’m getting a little tired of being slapped down for sentimental fantasies whenever I come out with something that seems perfectly natural to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Harriet. It was an unforgivable but unintentional lapse on my part,” Duff said, and went out of the room.

  Rory got up and put an arm round Harriet. He hoped she was crying because tears always eased her, but he had never had occasion to raise that temper so rarely provoked, and the face she turned to him seemed for the moment the face of a stranger.

  “Perhaps you can see now, Rory?” she said. “That’s all I’ve meant to him—a willing partner whose sentimental fancies can pall if you’re not in the mood to indulge them—a care and an acknowledged liability, yes, but an interloper just the same.”

  He touched her wet lashes with a compassionate finger, resisting a temptation to take her in his arms and kiss away the bitterness and hurt.

  “Harriet—dearest—don’t let bitterness spoil everything for you,” he said. “Duff was impossible, I know, but he’s worried stiff. A lot depends on the success of this Dublin trip tomorrow, you know.”

  “So I would imagine. I told Samantha at the party that I was tired of being pushed around to make a Roman holiday for them both. Well, if he wants her, he can have her. It’s nothing to do with me, and never has been, really.”

  “You told Samantha she could have him?”

  “No, I said they’d better make up their minds.”

  “I see. Well, that explains the lady’s intention of coming here to see you before she goes back to Dublin, I suppose.”

  “Does it? Well, she hasn’t been, and I couldn’t care less either way,” said Harriet. “My only regret is that you have to go tomorrow, too. Must you, Rory?”

  “Yes, Princess, I must,” he said. “Apart from anything else, I’ve an appointment with a manager I must keep—or word will get around in the theatre that I’m unreliable, and it’s time, too, for you to take stock on your own.”

  She smiled at him a little tearfully. She did not believe that his appointment with a manager was much more than a polite excuse, but she understood that for both of them the moment had come to take stock.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said.

  “I hope you will—but I’ll be back, and when I am, I shall expect to find your dreams have come true for you.”

  “My dreams have come true, but nobody wants them,” she said, and he gave her a sharp little slap on her behind.

  “Don’t start being sorry for yourself. You’ve a long way to go before you can sink comfortably into the role of the neglected wife sitting at home by the fire with only your husband’s socks to darn!” he said, and Jimsy chose that moment to announce the hour of luncheon with his usual unrestrained assault on the gong.

  The meal was not prolonged, for they were still finishing the cold remains of turkey and gammon and sausages which, Nonie observed with distaste, seemed to go on for ever, but Harriet was glad there was no need to linger. Duff made an effort to make amends for his rudeness by being more talkative than he generally was at mealtimes, but the fact that he was making an effort at all merely embarrassed Harriet and she was glad when he said that business matters would keep him in his study for most of the afternoon. Nonie, dispirited by the fact of her Uncle Rory’s departure the next day, claimed him for herself, and Harriet decided to take Uriah for a special walk to make up for his misadventures of the morning.

  As she went out into the sparkling brilliance of the afternoon and felt the snow crisp and firm under her feet, a returning pleasure in the remembered delight of childhood eased her sore spirit. Even the desolate waste of the Plain of Clooney was turned into smilin
g beauty by its covering of snow, and Harriet spared a thought for the hunted man perhaps lying up in those frozen hills, and hoped, with an illogical disregard for justice, that he would get away.

  She kept to the rough farm track which bounded the demesne because there the snow did not lie deep and Uriah’s short legs could manage without being caught in the drifts. He was wild with excitement, jumping and sliding, throwing up the snow with his blunt little muzzle, rolling over and over and barking wildly. Harriet watched him and her heart filled with love for all the faults of his unknown breeding that made him an object of ridicule, the plebeian tail, the nautical roll, the coat like a moth-eaten hearthrug; he was everything he should not be, but trust and love and honesty shone out of his eyes, and her own unwanted heart went out to him.

  She had lingered so long playing with the dog that the sun was setting as they made homeward tracks.

  She climbed the fence into the road, calling to the lagging Uriah, and as she crossed to go in at the gates, a car swept from the forecourt, its engine wildly revving, and Samantha’s gay little scarlet sports model shot through the gates, narrowly missing her. She had a glimpse of Samantha’s white, furious face behind the wheel as she breaked for an instant and skidded; in the same instant, she saw Uriah, having made a detour lower down in the boolly easier on his short legs, scurrying up the road with lolling tongue and a frenzied propulsion of all his limbs to catch up.

  “Samantha! Wait!” Harriet shouted, but her shout only spurred the dog on to greater effort. He came ploughing his way through the snow straight across the path of the car, and in a split second of time, she caught the expression on Samantha’s face as she, too, saw the dog. She trod on the accelerator, driving straight at him, as a wheel went over him, slewed the car round with some skill and shot off down the road.