Dear Deceiver

by Doris E. Smith

  The boy appeared carrying a school bag against his scarlet anorak. He was about ten, an apple-cheeked broth of a boy with the knees of a footballer and a brown pudding-basin haircut. ‘Sorry!’ he said cheerfully. ‘I didn’t see you.’

  ‘Sorry!’ his father echoed wrathfully. ‘That’s a fat lot of use. Sorry won’t buy me a new car. Get in.’ The tone was scathing and Toby, Haidee noticed, had gone bright red, particularly about the ears.

  ‘It’s all right. I...’

  ‘Get in,’ Rory Hart repeated. ‘And don’t argue. Wait a minute,’ he added sharply as the back door was being opened. ‘Wipe your feet.’

  The only light relief was provided by someone who certainly would not willingly have done so.

  ‘Is there something in the basket?’ Toby asked excitedly as he plumped down beside it.

  ‘A cat,’ he was answered laconically.

  ‘What’s it doing there?’

  ‘I devoutly hope—nothing.’ The atmosphere seemed to be lightening a trifle. Haidee saw Toby grin at the back of his father’s head.

  ‘The cat and Miss Desmond will be here for a while,’ Rory volunteered. ‘Say hello to her and apologize for scaring her like that.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Haidee said deprecatingly. Far too much had been made of that unpremeditated dash. ‘Hello, Toby,’ she added. ‘We spoke on the phone last night.’

  It had seemed then an engaging voice. Its owner matched it exactly. He was sitting forward with his knees spread; both they and his hands were grubby and his fringe was like a garden fork, but no one could meet that healthy grin without smiling back.

  ‘Hi!’ said Toby as though, amazingly, he too liked what he saw. ‘I don’t know what your name is.’

  Haidee knew a moment of mischief—and daring. ‘I’ve a lot of names. Johnny will do.’

  It brought a small sound of disbelief from the seat beside her. Toby, however, seemed easy, not to say approving.

  ‘Okay. Hi, Johnny,’ he said at once.

  Glenglass House had been built deep in the woods. It looked to Haidee like nineteenth century and she was sorry to see that a modern thick glass door had replaced the original. Three storeys of white-framed windows peeped from the rowan red creeper. In such surroundings even a ‘pre-fab’ would not have looked unromantic; Glenglass with its hand railed steps and the scattering of scarlet leaves on its forecourt gave its prodigal daughter a tremor of delight. Not that this time she made the mistake of showing it.

  Rory Hart was the first to speak. ‘Welcome,’ he said as they pulled up. ‘Welcome to my bed and board.’

  ‘Thank you, but it is Jennie I’m staying with,’ Haidee assured him. ‘In Jennie’s part of the premises.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  How could it be? she questioned. Was he trying to tell her that the Whittaker apartments were not self-contained? ‘I presume my mother has her own flat?’

  ‘Your mother,’ Rory said smoothly, ‘still thinks she has the whole house. In point of fact she has half the top floor. It’s a pro tern highly unsatisfactory arrangement for all concerned and my bosses are doing their damnedest to get her out. The place is overdue for demolition.’

  ‘Demolition?’ No acting was needed to convey ‘Suzanne’s’ horror; it was so utterly Haidee’s horror too. The old house blended so kindly with the old trees. ‘You couldn’t.’

  ‘No trouble at all,’ he assured her. ‘Walk on some of the upstairs floors. That’s all you’d need to do. Anyway, come on.’ He opened his door. ‘You’ll soon see for yourself.’

  At the top of the steps another door had opened and Jennie’s slim figure was visible. It was the moment which more than all others had been in Haidee’s thoughts. She had put herself into Jennie’s shoes, she had analysed how she herself would feel. And it had all come back to the classic behaviour pattern of teenage resentment.

  Now she watched anxiously as Jennie approached. First of all, was it possible that she was only fifteen? The long midi dress she was wearing made her look at least nineteen or twenty. It was a dark sludge colour with a white motif, drably smart and suiting the wearer’s Madonna-like face and long straight parted hair. Somehow she made Haidee who was five foot five and only a pound or two over eight stone feel like a carthorse.

  For all that the speech had been rehearsed and had better be made.

  ‘Jennie,’ she said softly, ‘I hope you understand. I’m here because Mother asked it, to help you in any way I can.’ Jennie Whittaker had never seen her half-sister, so in theory the brown eyes looking her over could not possibly spot any difference. Just the same it seemed an age before the slightly plummy but beautiful Desmond-Whittaker tones made themselves heard.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ they said. ‘Won’t you come in?’

  ‘You’re sleeping with Rory. I hope you don’t mind. I’m there too,’ Jennie said calmly as they went into the hall. ‘It was his idea,’ she went on in that pleasant informative tone which might have belonged to an Establishment for Young Ladies. ‘The top floor’s unsafe—dry rot, that sort of thing.’ In face of such refinement Haidee’s slightly hysterical thoughts on the safety rating of Rory Hart’s bed were discreditable. Anyway, the situation was not as it sounded. ‘Sleeping with Rory’ meant occupying a room on the first floor of the mansion where he had his quarters.

  Gentry was a much abused word, but Jennie’s every bone proclaimed it. So did her courtesy. But Haidee did not deceive herself. It was the unwritten law of noblesse oblige. The Desmond forebears fighting duels would similarly have permitted their adversaries to recover a dropped weapon.

  The room into which she was shown was aesthetically a misfit. The wallpaper, once a virginal white and gold, had faded and the carpet was worn, but the wide bed looked new. So did its fringed dark blue bedspread.

  ‘I daresay you’re glad to have this room again,’ Jennie remarked. The look of curiosity in her eyes told Haidee she had been waiting for some reaction.

  The room. It must have been Suzanne’s. Confound it! Another round she had lost. She walked somewhat wearily to the window and in the pier glass of the out-of-date dressing table a girl moved along with her, a girl in a dull gold belted waterproof with her hair, up and a curling tress at each ear. Herself. But at that moment she could easily have believed that a third presence was there, resting her eyes on the tiers of oak and ash, beech, chestnut and larch. Was it from this window that Suzanne Desmond had said good-bye to Glenglass and had gone like the doe in the ballad ‘where nobody wist among the leaves so green-o?’

  ‘Yes, I’m glad,’ she said quietly. ‘I always loved the view from this window.’

  There had been something touching about the seedy bedroom with the new bed. Someone had done their best. Had it been Jennie?

  The other rooms, however, required no apology. The grey and white bathroom had striking delft blue tiles and along the corridor a door half open showed a bright green wall and a bed cover vividly checked in emerald, royal and white. Toby’s billet, by the look of the boots which were lying just where one would fall over them.

  The living-room was also a surprise, not only on account of the feeling for colour which it demonstrated, floor-length topaz brown curtains, paler brown walls and a carpet midway between brown and honey, but because some of its pieces were so good. The wing chair, for instance, and the chest of drawers with its bow-shaped handles.

  The third surprise was her host. Manners maketh man, they said. There had not been much manners about the booted man who had scowled at Brand’s basket, but now, in the setting of this charming room, with his boots off and his working clothes exchanged for a collar and tie and a suit in mire green tweed with a safari jacket he was distinguished, even courtly.

  She had two thoughts as she went forward, how well he wore the new fashion and did she do as well in front-laced plum midi skirt and high-necked printed blouse. He was certainly staring at her and not all the gloss of brushed hair and impeccable shirt could hide the challenge in his eyes.
Dear heaven, she thought anxiously, is this the way Suzanne would come into a room?

  Until that moment the masquerade vis-a-vis Rory Hart had been a game of skill. Emotion began and ended with Antonia and Jennie. Now, suddenly, unfairly, here he was, freshly groomed and—even worse—obviously about to set out drinks—for her—because he thought she was Suzanne and because some time, somewhere he and Suzanne had had a boy-and-girl love affair.

  It made her feel unclean. She longed to say: ‘Not for me, please. I’m not the right one.’ In fact she said: ‘What a delightful room.’

  He returned disconcertingly: ‘You’ve seen it before.’

  ‘Oh well...’ She could have kicked herself. ‘I mean—the way you have it—the furniture.’

  ‘You’ve seen that before too. Most of it, at least. This chair—’ was it imagination that the eyes had narrowed slightly?—‘is from home. Remember the night you got in a tear and thumped the stuffing out of it?’

  Leave the chair out, Haidee thought, her heart was thumping now.

  ‘You’ve had it covered.’ A safe guess. Those chestnut, gold and magenta stripes were as smart as tomorrow. And as new.

  ‘Clever girl,’ he commended lightly. ‘So I have.’

  ‘Well, what about sitting in it?’ he invited next moment, pouring her a sherry. ‘Quite safe, I’d say. It will hardly remember you so long after, and in any case you’ve changed. Not too much, I hope,’ he added to no one in particular.

  He went on to warn her about the meal. ‘I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Jennie’s O.C. tonight.’ Mrs. Ryan who came in to look after Toby and himself was being temperamental and had not been seen for the past few days. Haidee asked shrewdly if this could be because she had not taken to having the household increased on the distaff side. She used the term as a joke. ‘That’s it in a nutshell,’ Rory responded matter-of-factly. ‘It seems she thinks a walk should not have two cocks. Especially on the distaff side.’

  It suited Haidee. Taking on the housekeeping would be a way of paying for her keep. She said so and was greeted by a flicker of irritation.

  ‘Since when do you have to pay for your keep? This is your home even if you do seem to have forgotten the fact.’ Fortunate perhaps that the combined entry of Jennie and Toby at this point prevented further discussion. Toby drew his father’s eyes at once.

  ‘I thought I told you to change your shirt.’

  ‘Oh, heavens, must he?’ Jennie’s anxious voice interposed. ‘I don’t think the meat will keep hot. Sorry.’ Her face had lost its matt appearance and to Haidee’s concern her hands trembled as they set down what looked like a chipped-to-a-cinder roast.

  They ate it manfully, Toby alone having to be assisted to the task by a paternal: ‘And what are you staring at? Get on with it.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m afraid it’s not very good,’ Jennie said contritely. ‘The book was a bit confusing.’

  Perhaps one should say nothing, perhaps one should be more positive. Haidee plumped for the latter. ‘Never mind. It’s a lot better than the first dinner I cooked for Mrs. Brown.’ There was no necessity to add that at the time she had been nine years old, any more than it was possible to interpret the sudden gleam in the eye of the Forester-in-Charge. Was it derision or sympathy? One thing was assured, his sympathy for Jennie. He ate the maltreated beef with well-feigned relish and made conversation with urbanity.

  It was mostly about Glenglass. The forest consisted of two thousand productive acres and about five hundred scrub. He had eight men with him, ‘not enough, but what can you do?’ The house was coming down after Christmas and the site would in future support a purpose-built research unit and forestry extension school similar to the extension school in Avondale. A new Forester’s house was already under construction into which he and Toby would move. Jennie, of course, 'one of these fine days’ (he made it sound quite tender) would be going back to school. ‘But we hope she’ll find time to come over to Ireland in the holidays and stay with us.’ School was in Surrey.

  Jennie’s brow was already furrowing. ‘I don’t know what to say about school, Rory. I’ve been thinking perhaps I shouldn’t...’

  ‘Think nothing,’ she was commanded. ‘Except about those A-levels. You are going to stagger us all, the way your father planned.’

  So far as Suzanne, real or substitute, was concerned she appeared quite superfluous as a prop for Jennie’s future. It seemed to be in capable if domineering hands.

  However, she now had a consolation prize—the chores.

  The meal ended and everyone, Toby included, helped to clear it away. The kitchen, no less than the sitting-room, had much to be salvaged before the bulldozers moved in. The sink unit and the formica working tops finished to look like wood could have served the needs of a far bigger family than just a man and a boy. Jennie had taken possession of the sink, so Haidee took up a tea towel and remained at the ready. Rory, who had previously chased Toby back to his books, went after him, leaving the girls alone.

  Brand, who thought Haidee had done some daft things in her time but never one quite so incomprehensible as this, walked round the avocado tiles expressing his disgust. This was a rotten pad. People here were taking no notice of him.

  Why wasn’t she taking him home? He looked for the table whose legs he scratched when he wanted to go out, and blow me, there wasn’t such a thing. Pan almighty! what a place, he yeowled.

  Haidee knew she must not fuss too much about Brand. He was there on sufferance and sad to say he had not made his customary conquest. She turned to lay a plate down on the counter and flinched as he sprang angrily up her back.

  ‘Heavens,’ said Jennie, staring. ‘I never saw a cat do that before.’

  Brand had achieved a tiny corner of home. He dug his claws ecstatically into Haidee’s shoulder and purred. He was heavy and the pain was excruciating, but it was his special thing and you might as well have Morecambe without Wise. She said so. Jennie' did not smile. But she did seem to be trying to understand and that, somehow, made it worse. Her eyes were like melting chocolate, her mouth with the drooping underlip was still and serious.

  ‘I don’t like cats much. Sorry,’ she said apologetically. ‘You really will have to watch him. They set traps, you know, for the badgers.’

  Once again Haidee felt a little sick. It must have shown in her face.

  ‘It’s not their fault,’ Jennie added hastily. ‘Badgers are very destructive. They have to. Honestly.’

  ‘I just hate the thought of it,’ Haidee confessed.

  ‘Yes, I know. You’re not a bit what I expected. When I was small and Mother used to talk about you I decided you must be a sort of witch putting spells on all the men. Awfully silly—me, I mean. But Mother really didn’t describe you well.’

  Haidee put two hands to Brand’s ample girth and carried him into the sitting-room. There was no sign of her host, but Toby was at the table. The cap of his pen was to his lips and he was gazing into space. How long had he been sitting there? Not a letter, figure or line had managed to get itself on to the page of exercise book.

  She let Brand down and tapped the table. ‘Hi!’

  ‘Hi yourself!’ Toby responded amicably.

  She could imagine what Rory would have said to such licence. But something about Toby called to her. He got such short innings with his father. It could be a very lonely life.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. I’ve finished.’ He closed the book. ‘Some of the boys take all night over their homework. I get it done in about five minutes.’ He had such a bright bonny face that it seemed likely.

  ‘What subjects do you like best?’

  ‘I don’t know. All of them. I’m good at everything,’ Toby said modestly.

  ‘So I suppose one of these fine days you’ll be getting a scholarship?’

  When you said: ‘Good boy’ to Brand his greeny-gold eyes always looked as though they were saying: ‘Don’t mention it—more than twice!’ She f
ound the brown eyes meeting hers at this moment had exactly the same message.

  ‘Shouldn’t wonder,’ their owner said carelessly.

  ‘Well, I’d wonder.’ The voice came from behind them. ‘In fact I’d think I was dreaming. We have the school dance here, Suzanne. He’s been bottom of the class so long I wonder it’s not stuck to the seat of his pants.’

  The scathing tone sent Toby’s hands slapping down protectively on the empty page before him. A larger hand removed them. Investigation was brief and pungent. ‘Now see here, young fella. It’s time you woke yourself up. If you can’t do it here there are places that will make you.’ He turned his son’s ruffled head till its nose pointed to the books on the table. ‘Get stuck in there for a start. Jennie’s coming to watch you.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Toby began resentfully. ‘I’m doing it. She needn’t come. Johnny can watch me,’ he added. ‘I don’t mind her.’

  ‘I’d like to,’ Haidee said quickly. ‘I might learn something.’

  ‘Just a minute, if you don’t mind,’ Rory cut in crushingly. ‘You’re coming out with me.’

  She supposed the reason she went so quietly for her coat was that he made the possessiveness seem so natural. People living in the same house went on like that without thought—‘When you’re out you can get my fags’ or ‘For heaven’s sake oil that door.’ Yet surely in their Glenglass days Suzanne of the big house and Rory of the small shop had not established that kind of relationship.

  Passing the dining-room door Toby’s mutinous mutter floated out to her.

  ‘Aw, knock it off, I am getting down to it.’

  He was gently corrected by Jennie. ‘You know you mustn’t say knock it off.’

  ‘You don’t think you’re all a bit hard on him?’ Haidee, who did think so, most emphatically asked Rory in an undertone.

  Patently he didn’t. ‘He can do with it. If you’ve any thoughts about interfering—don’t.’

  ‘Interfering? Why should I do that?’