Dear Deceiver

by Doris E. Smith

  The men were not brothers, but Haidee could not help thinking of Jacob and Esau, the one gentle and citified with the soul of a dreamer, the other rough and earthy, primarily hunter and slayer. And the girl in the middle today? Which had she loved? In Haidee’s mind there seemed no possible doubt. But where was she? Where had she gone? Jacob had had to serve only fourteen years for his beloved Rachel, Paul had searched and waited for fifteen.

  She had expected at least a short wait, but there was none. The doctor came at once and took possession of the sister’s office in order to speak privately.

  ‘I take it you know the position, Miss Desmond. It would be wrong of me to give you false hope.’ His tone was to the point, but his eyes were not unfeeling.

  It struck a new note of apprehension. His expression, the hand he had laid on her shoulder—did he not know the position? But perhaps he was not the doctor in whom Paul had confided.

  She asked awkwardly: ‘Mr. Freeman talked to someone about me yesterday. I gather, doctor, it wasn’t you?’

  ‘It was. Why shouldn’t it have been?’ Again the look was kindly. ‘I know. You’ve a conscience about the past. Forget it. You’re here now and that’s the main thing.’

  ‘But did Mr. Freeman not explain...’

  ‘Not to me. Why should he?’ the doctor questioned reasonably. ‘Explanations aren’t my province, and they’re not your mother’s either at this stage. You must be prepared for a big change in her.’ He went on to give details. The operation had revealed irreparable brain damage. Complete recovery was impossible. A vegetable existence with partial paralysis and severe impairment of sight was the most that could be hoped for.

  ‘Hoped for?’ Haidee echoed.

  ‘I agree. But that’s not up to us. I’ll take you to her.’ He rose.

  ‘But I...’ Slowly but remorselessly it seemed the net was closing, drawing her in, turning her into Suzanne Desmond—and without Paul and the explanation he had promised to give she couldn’t do it. ‘I don’t think—’ she stammered. ‘How long is this likely to last?’ It was a bungling question, wretchedly selfish, wretchedly stupid.

  ‘I can’t tell you that, Miss Desmond. I’m not God.’ The doctor’s face and tone hardened perceptibly. ‘Your mother is conscious now and expecting you. Do you want me to tell her you’ve been prevented from coming?’

  It registered sharply that she was asking too much of the hospital. What right had she after all to involve them? With Paul gone the choice was hers and hers alone.

  Slowly she shook her head. ‘No, Doctor, please take me to her.’

  ‘You asked how long this would last,’ the doctor said as they walked along the corridor. ‘In my opinion your mother will become comatose again and remain so until her heart gives up the struggle. It could be days or weeks. I’m afraid we can go no nearer than that.’ He stopped at Antonia’s door, glanced briefly through its glass spy-hole and motioned Haidee back a pace. ‘Your sister has had a rough time of it. She’ll be glad of you to share the burden.’

  ‘My—’ Tight-lipped control kept the ejaculation from finishing. ‘Is my sister here now?’ Sister? It wasn’t possible. Paul had said no relatives.

  ‘Yes. She comes every day, even when your mother doesn’t know she’s there.’ His eyes took on a new understanding. ‘I daresay you’d like a word with her first. Jennie,’ he said, quietly opening the door a few inches.

  It was a terrifying moment. Whatever about Rory Hart, surely Suzanne’s sister would need only one look to denounce her. For a second Haidee thought frantically of flight. And then the door opened and Jennie came out.

  Her long brown hair fell over the shoulders of her navy blue sweater, her long oval face was unreadable except that it held no joy. And she was young, early teens, little more than a child. What this youngster had gone through in the past weeks crashed through all Haidee’s fears for her own position. ‘Jennie,’ she said softly. ‘I’m sorry it’s been so long.’

  A dog’s brown eyes are the epitome of faithfulness. Jennie had spaniel eyes, but they seemed to be looking at Haidee as though their owner was absent. They were opaque and distant.

  The doctor’s gaze turned from one face to the other. ‘It’s a long time, I take it, since you two have seen each other?’ ‘We never have,’ Jennie said without emotion.

  ‘Then would you like me to evict Sister again and give you her office for a few minutes?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Again it was Jennie’s voice, a beautiful one, Haidee acknowledged with envy. ‘I don’t think we have anything to talk about.’ She turned the full of her veiled brown eyes on her so-called sister. ‘You’d better go in. She’s waited hours for you as it is.’

  She might as well have said ‘She’s waited fifteen years for you.’ It was in every line of her, narrow dark back, tiny wide-belted waist, flowing navy trousers, as she moved away down the corridor.

  ‘Oh, please don’t ...’ Haidee made to follow and was restrained by the doctor’s hand. Jennie had closed the door. He pushed it open and motioned Haidee forward. A voice said faintly: ‘Sue?’

  Haidee was still standing uncertainly out of vision. But this situation had happened to her before. That evening four weeks ago several friends had been standing by to help, but her mother had looked for none but her daughter. Her last words: ‘Haidee, is it tea-time?’ had shown a gallant desire to be normal right to the end. The lump that rose suddenly in Haidee’s throat was not assumed. As the voice said: ‘Sue?’ again, she hurried across to the bed.

  ‘I’m here, Mother. I’m here.’

  However tangled the web, weaving it was child’s play. Antonia Whittaker asked no questions and uttered no reproaches. She was in fact floating in a happy blur. ‘These eyes of mine, such a nuisance. I can’t see you properly.’ Threadlike as it was, the voice had the same beautiful cadences as Jennie’s. It raised a scarifying question. How had Suzanne spoken?

  ‘Just as well!’ Doggedly Haidee made a joke of it. ‘I’m still—’ She paused. A risk, but in a way it made her feel less of an impostor. ‘The plain one of the family.’

  It had to be true, that is, if Suzanne had really looked like her, for Jennie’s Victorian face could be beautiful and Antonia’s had very nearly the prettiness of a girl. The hair that framed it, visible today without the bandage, was blonde and baby-soft, the wide mouth was a perfect bow and the large blue eyes had a fluttery look. At this moment they seemed imploring.

  ‘No, never. You’re you.’ A look of fret came in. ‘So silly. My stupid arm—I can’t even touch you.’

  If she only knew, Haidee thought warmly, how deeply she had touched her already. On impulse she leaned forward and laid her cheek against the sufferer’s. Surely the real Suzanne would have done no less. And surely the past could not be fully ignored.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she found herself whispering. ‘I should have come years ago. I’ve caused you so much worry.’

  Had it been a mistake? The warm tears dropping on her cheek were free-flowing and might be weakening. ‘Don’t, please,’ she urged guiltily. ‘I’m back now.’ Another glance at the tear-filled eyes decided her. ‘Back to stay as long as you want me.’ If emotion had wrung the promise from her common sense told her that it was one from which she would soon be released. And already joy was surmounting the face’s fragility.

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ Antonia said tremulously. She drew a breath. ‘I was afraid. It’s so long. And your voice has changed—not much, just a little. But I wasn’t sure ...’ Again she stopped.

  It was a cold moment echoing icily Haidee’s previous thoughts of Jacob and Esau. Their blind father had said in puzzled helplessness: ‘The voice is the voice of Jacob,’ and here other eyes were dimming and bringing the same distress. Haidee knew her motives were as high as Paul’s had been. It made no matter. The moment was not only cold, it was grimy. She loathed herself.

  Antonia, meantime, was continuing with more strength. ‘Do you remember him, Sue? He was so proud of you. Had su
ch plans and then never...’ There was another painful pause. ‘I think—I have missed him every day. Is that wrong?’

  ‘No, no. How could it be?’ Haidee soothed. It was not at all difficult to get the drift. ‘He’ must refer to Suzanne’s father who had died presumably when she was still a subteen.

  ‘Such happy days,’ Antonia was saying. ‘The three of us and Glenglass. It changed, you know. You were right, I...’ Restlessly she turned her head. ‘I want Edward. It will be Edward, won’t it, when I get there...’

  Again intuition helped. Paul had referred to ‘Jack Whittaker.’ ‘Edward’ must have been Edward Desmond, Suzanne’s father. ‘I’m sure it will,’ Haidee said with conviction.

  More sentences were coming, broken but lucid. ‘Shouldn’t have married Jack. It was—different. And for Glenglass. You—would have helped. Jennie doesn’t understand. She’ll get into trouble. She’ll let that man ... poor Jennie, it’s not her fault, I shouldn’t have had her...’

  ‘Darling, please!’ Haidee was shocked.

  ‘Not like us,’ Antonia repeated. ‘Poor Jennie. You will stay with her? Look after her for me.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Haidee soothed mechanically.

  ‘Promise.’ The voice was urgent, taxing the speaker’s powers to the utmost. ‘Promise you’ll go to Glenglass. When I die she mustn’t be alone, not at first, not till she’s over the shock. Fifteen. She’s fifteen.’ It seemed as though she’d spent the last ounce of her strength. Haidee begged her to rest. It was the way to get better.

  ‘So silly,’ Antonia returned clearly. ‘So silly to be afraid of the truth. I’m not.’

  A shadow crossed her face, but her eyes did not close. When the nurse heard the bell and came in, they were still open, staring into Haidee’s with complete tranquillity.

  When Haidee reached home that evening Brand was on his usual vantage point, the high windowsill of the larder. He looked fed up. All this going out, what about me, Brand challenged, left here to starve.

  Haidee went out to apologize. Brand was gracious. He yawned stretched and stepped on to her shoulder. This was precision toeing and he was good at it. Haidee was equally skilled in her part of the manoeuvre. It was one of the pleasures of their day.

  That evening she needed it badly. She needed the whole house badly. Only that morning, before she had closed its door and gone to call for Skipper, she had been thinking gratefully that it was losing the barren feel of those days after the funeral and showing itself to her, corner by corner, as her own place—the piano, the fringed Spanish rug, the galloping white horses in the blue-green picture of the Elysian Fields. Her own place, her own things, her own peace. What craziness had involved her in today’s unpeaceful morass. The accident was tragic enough, the threads and cross-currents were baffling, and daunting in the extreme.

  ‘I must have been mad, Brand,’ she said flatly. ‘I don’t even know how to get there.’

  It might seem a minor difficulty. ‘You've a tongue in your head’ had been one of the maxims on which she had been reared. But in this case it was major. All right for Haidee Brown to have a tongue and use it; for Suzanne Desmond to ask the way to her own home was somewhat different. Taxi? From Dollymount it would be a run of at least twenty miles and priced accordingly. Besides, she would be able to give the driver no directions at all.

  There remained one possibility—a cool assumption of rights.

  She carried the phone across and sat down with the directory.

  Government Services. Lands, Department of—Forestry Division—Foresters’ Residences.

  The list was long and there were several beginning with ‘Glen’. Glendalough. Glenealy. Glengarra. Glenglass. Glemnalure. Glen Imaal. Glenglass had no appendage clue. Glen Imaal, for instance, had Donard after it, so you knew it was in West Wicklow. Her mind was so reluctant to dial the Glenglass number that on the first attempt it made her fingers go wrong. The second try was successful. The bell rang, the phone was lifted and a voice sang out:

  ‘Hello. Glenglass Forest. Forester’s Residence. Toby Hart speaking.’

  It was a child’s voice, clear and high. In itself a shock because Rory Hart had not struck her as being in any sense paterfamilias.

  ‘May I speak to Mr. Hart, please, Mr. Rory Hart?’ Haidee asked.

  ‘Yes. Hang on, I’ll get him,’ the voice responded cheerfully.

  Haidee liked all children, but boy children especially, and Toby sounded agreeably relaxed. Not so the voice that suddenly growled in the background.

  ‘Well, find out. And apologize. And stop saying: “Hang on”!’

  A second later she heard the phone being picked up. ‘My apologies,’ the treble tones announced. ‘I omitted to ask who was calling.’

  Haidee’s lips twitched. ‘Suzanne Desmond.’

  Once more the phone went down—and was whipped up. Extraordinarily for all the miles it was away from her, haste and urgency came overpoweringly across. ‘What did you say to him?’ Rory Hart’s voice demanded. ‘What name did you give?’ There was a thud as though he had pulled a door to. ‘He knows nothing, remember.’

  A tongue of fire that had nothing to do with the proximity of ‘Scandinavian, meaning flame’ seemed to be licking up Haidee’s face. ‘What name?’ The rough tone had been quite unlike that in which he’d jibed at ‘Suzanne Brown’. So the implication was terrifying. Had he spotted the deception? Was he trying to catch her out? So! She would brazen it out.

  ‘You know the name I gave him. He told you, I take it? Suzanne Desmond.’

  ‘Yes—well, I had to be sure,’ a somewhat mollified tone responded. ‘He’s problem enough, I assure you, without that particular hare being started. What made you phone?’

  ‘To tell you I’m coming to Glenglass after all.’

  ‘You're doing what?’ It seemed a bombshell. ‘To stay, do you mean? Where?’

  ‘Wherever Jennie is. My mother is anxious she shouldn’t be alone.’

  ‘She’s not alone.’

  ‘Then who has her?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ That certainly put a different complexion on things, might even relieve her of her promise. Jennie in the bosom of the forester’s family was probably in no need of sisterly care. ‘You’re looking after her? You and your wife?’

  The silence, so sharp and short, was almost as though the line had failed. ‘Are you still there?’ she asked.

  In reply the voice cut against her ear. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I told you. Suzanne.’ Her blood was beginning to chill.

  ‘Then what’s the game? You said my wife—or didn’t you?’ He hurled a request into the background. ‘Turn that thing down!’

  It was a lifeline, giving her time to collect herself. She’d boobed. Obviously there was something about his wife which the real Suzanne would have known. Dead? Separated? One thing alone was clear. Mrs. Rory Hart was not in Glenglass. She thought quickly. ‘No. I said “Is she all right?” Jennie. Is she all right?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t she be?’

  More was now becoming clear, clearer with every second. Antonia’s fears for her younger daughter, the quavering references to ‘that man’ and ‘getting into trouble’. And Haidee did not blame her. A teenager with Jennie’s looks and that kind of man, a man who would stalk uninvited into your bedroom while you were changing! For the first time she felt that the need was urgent. She could not live with her thoughts were she to do nothing.

  ‘She’s all right,’ Rory Hart was now saying. ‘They wanted her to stay at school, but she broke out and turned up here. And I’m not having her blamed for it. In her shoes I’d have done exactly the same.’

  ‘So would I,’ Haidee said firmly. ‘But that’s not the point. The point is Mother has put her in my charge at least for the present. Arrangements can be made later.’

  ‘Later?’

  ‘When it’s all over.’ Was he being deliberately obtuse? ‘Then presumably she’ll go back to school and won’t
need me any more.’

  ‘And you?’ The words were clipped.

  ‘I shall leave too, of course, though naturally I’ll keep in touch with Jennie.’

  ‘But of course,’ Rory Hart agreed deferentially. ‘What could be more natural? The moon, perhaps, turning blue. A fascinating topic for discussion during the long winter nights!’ Definitely he had emphasized the last word. A man to steer clear of, Haidee decided, and wished she could do so. As she couldn’t, she let the quip go in a silence which she could only hope would register as icy.

  It may have done, for the subject was not pursued. Instead Rory Hart said briskly: ‘You want transport, I suppose?’ Astonishingly this, which to Haidee seemed far more surprising than keeping in touch with Jennie, appeared to be taken for granted. ‘Tomorrow? Let me see. Dollymount...’

  ‘I don’t want you to come in for me.’ It was a horrifying prospect. ‘I can get the bus if you’ll meet it.’ A gamble. Many buses left the city for destinations in Wicklow—Bray, Greystones, Delgany, Enniskerry, Kilcoole, to mention just five. She still had no notion which was nearest to Glenglass. But it sounded right. At least she hoped it did.

  The hope was vain. ‘That doesn’t sound a bit like you,’ Rory remarked flatly. ‘But we’ll nail it before you change your mind. Preferably Enniskerry, because I’ll have a chap near there about half past three. Look for a timber lorry—unless you object to travelling that way?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ Haidee said crisply. ‘Why should I?’ She was answered by a low-pitched whistle. ‘God’s fish, you have changed! Better watch that, Suzanne Brown. As a nice girl you’d be a disaster.’ He added brusquely, ‘As far as I remember, there’s a bus from town at two-thirty. See that you’re on it,’ and put down the receiver.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Brand was asleep. His pink nose pointing in a nest of amber down made him a little like a hedgehog. Thanks be to Pan she was sitting down again. He hated her to use the phone. It was a deflecting of attention and this was wrong. Haidee was Brand’s, he shone for her and she should shine exclusively for him. He had been very annoyed about her going away.