His mouth curved. "That bothers you, doesn't it?"
"It's just so out of character."
"Yes," he mused. "I suppose it is." And then, with pens in hand, he grinned and left us.
Bridget lowered her magazine, meeting my eyes. "Men," she said. "They love to be mysterious."
"And you love mysterious men," I reminded her.
"Lucky for James." Watching me do battle with a length of curling ribbon, she asked, "Is that really for Christopher?"
"Mm. I'm giving him the naval murder mystery."
"Oh. Because I meant to tell you earlier, you could have given him the Welsh one that Lewis sneaked into the heap."
' 'Does Christopher know Welsh?''
"Yes. He said his mother taught him. James never took any interest in learning it, Christopher said, but then James hasn't got an ear for languages. I've heard him butcher French," she told me. "Christopher, though, is a wonderful mimic. You ought to have heard him today, going on like the man at the coal-yard. He got the Welsh accent down perfectly."
The flat blade of the scissors slipped and left the ribbon, nicking the side of my thumb. I sucked the tiny wound a moment, wondering if Christopher could imitate an old man's voice, as well.
Bridget didn't notice my accident, nor my frown. "So I thought," she went on, "if you wanted that book off your hands, you could give it to Christopher."
"Well, I've got this one wrapped now," I said, attempting the ribbon again with more care. And besides, I had somebody different in mind for the Welsh book.
*-*-*-*-*
Gareth looked larger, somehow, in the dark. With the light spilling out from the passage behind him, his face was in shadow, unreadable. "A what?" he asked, as though he hadn't heard me right the first time.
"A Christmas present." I thrust the small parcel towards him. "Here, take it. It's not going to bite."
"What the hell'd you do that for?"
The wind struck my back and I shivered on the doorstep, losing patience. "Look, either take it or don't take it, I don't much care. But I can't stand here freezing all night."
He took the book warily, studied my face, and stepped back from the door. "Come in."
The Aga, nestled in its nook within the kitchen wall, had chosen to behave this evening, burning cheerfully and radiating warmth. With the fire cover off, the play of thin blue flames across the glowing mass of coals gave the illusion of an open hearth and made the room feel cosy. Chance was dozing on the flagstone floor close by the Aga's feet, too comfortable to do much more than wag his tail in greeting. Gareth clearly had been thinking about putting supper on. A can of Irish stew, unopened, sat beside the cutting-board, with a generous hunk of cheddar and a wholegrain cob. He shoved them to one side and set his gift on the worktop, reaching to plug in the kettle. "Tea?"
"Lord, no." I put a protesting hand to my stomach. "I've had tea with breakfast, tea with Elen, and tea at four o'clock. I really don't think I could face another pot."
He considered the problem. "I have instant chocolate," he said. "Any better?"
"Heaps. Thank you."
Retrieving the tin and two mugs from the cupboard, he glanced at me over his shoulder. "So you've been to see Elen today."
"Yes."
"And?"
"We had a long talk, about Tony. And Stevie."
He knew what was coming. "She said Tony wasn't the father."
"She did, yes."
"Bloody rubbish. If there's one thing I know about Elen, it's that she would never have cheated on Tony."
"She seemed very sure."
' 'She's confused in her mind about what really happened the day Tony died, that's all." He challenged me, "Can you remember everything about your husband's death?"
That caught me off guard. Till now I had nearly forgotten what Bridget had said about Gareth knowing Martin from the time he'd spent in London all those years ago. And of course, if Gareth and Bridget had talked about me, he would know I was widowed. "I wasn't with him when he died," I answered, very calm. "But yes, I have a fairly vivid memory of the day, and what I did, and who was with me."
The kettle boiled. He frowned and looked away. "Well, Elen doesn't." And then, in a completely different tone of voice, he asked, "How did you end up with a sod like Martin Blake? You hardly seem the type."
"What type is that?"
He met my eyes again. "You know the sort of man he was." He handed me the mug of frothing chocolate and I took it with a shrug.
"Like you, I met him at a party. He was sober then. He dazzled me. I wasn't very bright."
"Would you have stayed with him?"
No one had ever asked me that before. Would I have stayed with Martin if he hadn't died? I wasn't sure. I'd always thought—still did—that marriage was a promise, a commitment, not a thing you walked away from. But with Martin...
"Sorry," Gareth said. "That's not a fair question, is it?"
I replied without thinking, "I wouldn't have thought that you cared about fairness." Then, hearing how tactless that sounded, I hastened to soften the statement. "What I meant was—"
"I know what you meant." His dark eyes assessed me, expressionless. "You do have a high opinion of me, don't you?"
"Well, you haven't made it easy."
Frowning, he unplugged the kettle and lifted his mug from the worktop. "Come on through to the study. It's colder in there, but the chairs are more comfortable."
Chance came with us into the adjoining room, and settled himself with a sigh and a thump on the hearth, his shaggy back pressed close against the fire screen.
"You'll singe yourself, you idiot. Get out of that." Gareth nudged Chance aside with his foot before lifting the screen away, letting the fire's full heat spill out into the room. He was right—it did feel a bit chillier here, but the armchair he offered me cradled my back with more kindness than the hard wooden one in the kitchen.
"So." He sat at his desk by the half-shuttered window and swivelled the chair round to face me. "You think I'm an ill-mannered bastard, is that it?"
I didn't back down, this time. Lacing my fingers, I met his gaze levelly. "I think you like to give people that impression, yes."
"And why would I want to do that?"
"I don't know. To keep them away, I expect, or to keep up your image—the angry young playwright at war with the world."
To my astonishment, he smiled. "Not so young, anymore. And there are some who might dispute the 'playwright' part. My muse doesn't speak as freely as she used to."
Now, I thought, we'd moved to more familiar ground—
an agent and a writer talking shop. But still, I couldn't help but hesitate, uncertain of his smile, not wanting to put a foot wrong. "Have you been working on this play for long?"
"I started it years ago, right after Red Dragon Rising. But after I came out of London I chucked the whole thing, put the play in a drawer and just left it there rotting."
I assured him that a lot of writers did that. "I think when your first work has been such a stunning success, there's so much pressure to repeat the trick that..."
But Gareth was shaking his head. "The last thing I wanted," he said, "was another success. I was sick of the whole bloody business."
There was no use, I thought, in pointing out the pleasure that his work had given people, and the eagerness with which we'd all awaited his next play. I knew he wouldn't thank me for the praise. He'd only think it hollow flattery, and bracket me with all the hollow people that he'd so despised in London. I held my tongue, accepting his decision. "So what changed your mind?"
"Stevie's birth." He said that without hesitation. "Elen going around spinning tales about dragons and talking to Merlin..."
"You know about that, then?"
"Oh, yes, it's all part of the same thing, it makes Stevie special—a fatherless baby, a child of prophecy. Once she got on to all that, all her prophecy business, I couldn't help thinking of Henry VII. And once I start thinking," he told me, "I write."
"Well
I, for one, am glad of that. I do like your writing—you have such a poetic way with words." So much, I thought, for my determination not to praise him.
He didn't seem to mind. He shrugged. "It's not the words that worry me. The value of a play is in its silences."
"How so?"
"The silences," he said, "are when the actors get to act.
That's where the magic happens. Without the actors, all you have are pretty words on paper."
Tearing my eyes from the uneven stack of pages at his elbow, I tried to shift the conversation out of the abstract and into the concrete. "And does it have a title, this new play of yours?"
He measured me a moment. "I call it The Long Yellow Summer, from an old song the bards passed around in the summer of 1485, while everyone waited for Henry's return from his exile in Brittany. 'When the bull comes from the far land to battle with his great spear,' that's what they sang. 'When the long yellow summer comes and victory comes to us...' Henry, of course, was the bull—that was one of his symbols. Like Owain Glyn Dwr, he knew how to play on the prophecies."
"I imagine, like Owain, he'd make quite an interesting hero."
He shrugged. "Henry's not in the play. It's a couple of months in the lives of those waiting for him to return and do battle—much more scope, there, for intrigue. I wanted to steer clear of Henry."
"Because you don't connect with him?"
"Because we have too much in common."
"Ah." I shifted my gaze to the fire, reluctant to ask him the obvious question. Knowing nothing of his private life, I didn't want to pry. The flames dancing round one large coal to the rear of the grate disappeared with an audible puff in a trail of thin smoke, then sprang to life again, like magic.
I felt Gareth's eyes on my face, but I left it to him to break the silence. When he finally did, his voice was calm and even, making conversation. "He was taken from his mother as a young boy; so was I. Raised by strangers; so was I. He never knew his father." As I turned my head to look at him, he said, "Writing Henry would be little more than putting my own words in Henry's mouth. I bloody hate that kind of self-indulgence on the stage."
I didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry."
"Why be sorry? I survived."
Watching his jaw settle into the now familiar stubborn pose, I tried to picture what he would have looked like as a little boy, a child of five or thereabouts. I had no right, I knew, to ask him anything, but as someone who'd carried a baby myself I couldn't help wanting to know. "Your mother..."
' 'Drank herself to death, I'm told. A minor family illness she was kind enough to pass to me." The bitterness, I thought, was not for her. Not for his mother. It was meant for those who'd stepped between them, taken him away. "She couldn't stop the drinking, so they said she wasn't fit to raise a child. But she tried. She wanted help, not a bloody care order."
I understood now why, when he'd talked about social workers this morning on the cliff, he'd been so harsh. And I understood something else, too.
"So you see," he said, taking the thought from my mind, "why I do what I can to help Elen and Stevie, the way someone should have helped us. And why I'd like to kill whoever made that call to the social services."
I nodded, saying nothing. I had meant to share my suspicions of Christopher, but looking at Gareth's face I decided that wouldn't be wise. Not, at least, till I'd come up with actual proof.
"Nothing new on that front?" he asked.
"No, not really. I'm keeping an eye on what everyone does, like you said, but so far—" I broke off as a great hurling spatter of rain hit the window, surprising us both. It came down the chimney as well, landing on the coals with a scattering of tiny hisses. Gareth leaned over and twitched back the curtain to look. "It's really coming down," he said. "You'll have a wet walk home."
"Oh, that's all right, I've got my raincoat. And I'm only going to the pub, just up the road. I'm supposed to meet the others there at eight."
He let the curtain fall. "I'll run you up there in the car." "No, really, I'll be fine. You needn't—" "I take it they don't know you're here, with me?" Actually, I'd told Bridget some story about needing to phone through to Canada and discuss some non-existent crisis with my brother, but I didn't want Gareth to know I'd gone to such elaborate lengths just to bring him a Christmas present. I was trying to decide what I should tell him when he shrugged and said, "No problem. If they notice me dropping you off you can tell them we met in the lane and I gave you a lift."
"Thanks." And then, remembering how deeply he valued his privacy, I added, "I won't tell anyone, you know, about... well, what you said."
He'd finished his chocolate. Shifting the papers aside with his elbow, he swivelled to set the mug down on his desk. "If I'd thought there was any real danger of that, I'd have kept my mouth shut in the first place, now wouldn't I?"
Which was probably, I reasoned, as close as he would ever come to paying me a compliment.
XXIX
... and thro' the tree
Rushed ever a rainy wind, and thro' the wind
Pierced ever a child's cry...
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "The Last Tournament"
No one seemed to notice that I wasn't soaking wet. Except, perhaps, for Christopher, who flicked me a curious glance but said nothing, mainly because he was too busy fending off questions about where he himself had been. "Nowhere, really."
"You had to be somewhere," said James.
"I just went for a drive. Oh, and rented some videos."
That got Bridget's attention. "Videos?"
' 'Mm. Miracle on 34th Street and A Christmas Carol— the old black and white one, with Alastair Sim. Uncle Ralph's got a video recorder, we might as well use it."
Bridget, predictably, thought it a brilliant idea. For once, she didn't linger over after-dinner coffee, but herded us into the car and straight home to make popcorn. Not that I minded—it made a nice change from our usual gather-around-by-the-Christmas-tree evenings. It was heaven to lounge in the dark on the sitting-room sofa, with everyone silent and no need to make conversation.
I even did rather well, staying awake, but it was nearly midnight when we slipped the second tape into the video, and though I tried my best to follow Scrooge's nasty undertakings, by the time Marley's ghost finally clanked through the bedchamber, sleep was attacking in waves. Yawning, I leaned my head back on the cushions and let my eyes close. It was Marley's voice, really, that finished me off—that drab, mournful monotone, lecturing Scrooge.
As I drifted, I heard the ghost rise in a shrieking of chains, but the shrieking became something else, full of menace and terrible ...
Something behind me.
It roared again, gaining, and clutching the child I dragged myself free of the water and reeds and climbed on to the hard, frozen turf of an unknown field. I was too tired to run now, my legs moving leadenly. Soon it would be at our backs, it would catch us, and then ...
"Almost there," a voice whispered, ahead in the darkness. "Seek the light and then follow it. There you'll find safety."
I looked for the speaker. "Where are you?"
"Follow the light," came the answer, more faintly.
And a small, steady gleam like the flame of a lantern chased over the cold ground ahead of me, beckoning. It paused when I stumbled but never stopped moving, leading me swiftly across the strange field while the mist swirled around us and hid us from view. And then, when my strength had all gone and I felt I would faint if I went one step further, the light led me out of the mist altogether. I might have stepped over a threshold—a nebulous wall shifted shape at my back, as though held in place by some invisible force, while before me the moonlight struck pale through the perfect clear night to shine upon an ancient grove of oaks.
Their tangled branches, silvered by the moon, dripped thick with mistletoe, and somewhere in their twisted depths an owl hooted out a warning. The light had halted, quite abruptly, in the centre of the grove. And slowly the shadow beside it turned round an
d resolved itself into the shape of a man.
The old man I'd seen at St. Govan's.
His eyes met mine kindly, his hair blowing white as he took a step forwards and held out his hands. "It is time," he said. "Give me the child."
I tightened my hold. "No, I can't."
"It is time," he repeated. "Your journey is done. The boy's path lies with me now. Let him go."
"No." My hand closed protectively over the tousled fair curls, pressing his head to the curve of my shoulder. "He chose me. I have to protect him."
"If you would save him, you must give him into my care now or all will be lost. This is the boy's destiny."
My eyes filled. "Please, you can't take him from me."
The old man stood firm, hands outstretched. "So have I prophesied; so must it be."
"No." I turned, and in that one unguarded instant came a flash of flame that brought the night alive.
The shadows writhed in fury and an evil yellow eye, too close to mine, rolled over white as one thick grasping claw slashed through the wall of mist to steal the child from me. And the creature screamed its triumph, wheeled and vanished in a sudden flap of wings while I stood stunned and empty-handed on the scorched and barren earth.
I heard the child cry in terror; heard him cry, but couldn't follow. I could only stand and listen as the crying grew more distant, till it sounded somehow smaller like the wailing of a newborn.
Then a sudden swell of music rose to underscore the drama, and I forced my eyes to open.
On the screen, Scrooge was leaving the room where his sister had died. Almost died, I corrected myself... she revived for a moment and murmured in fever, too late for her brother to hear. "Promise me you'll take care of my boy,"
she implored him. "Promise me you'll take care..."
Bridget stirred in her chair and glanced over with glistening eyes. "I know. It always gets me, too, this part," she said, and handed me a tissue.
XXX
Then this is the Deciding Day.
John Dryden, Merlin, or The British Enchanter
There was only one shop in the village, but it seemed to sell everything, tidily organized into a space that was barely the size of my parents' front room.
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