Answer was a cool hard look. ‘Why indeed?’ he murmured enigmatically: ‘After all these years.’ It was, she supposed, another dig at the ‘woman-on-an-island’ attitude Suzanne had adopted in the past.
Outside a bright moon diluted the darkness making Rory’s face look as though it had been rinsed in blue. ‘Now’s as good a time as any,’ he remarked. ‘What do you think of him?’
He could only mean Toby. ‘I think he’s great,’ she could say it truthfully. ‘And very like you.’
‘You think that?’ The tone was amused. ‘Well, you’re not the first to say it. How do you feel about it?’
Somewhere along the line they had lost the levity. His eyes gleamed in the shadows like gimlets. It was an unnerving question. She answered as best she could. ‘I don’t know. It’s all so long ago. But I think I’m glad.’
‘You’ve thought it out, haven’t you?’ The searching tone was terrifying.
And dear knows, she’d enough and to spare of eeriness. The moon, bouncing like a football on the fence of clouds, made the path black and white as a badger’s face and the alarm call of a blackbird had just torn through the darkness. Quite enough to startle a city-dweller without the added fear that she was being doubted.
But suddenly—and very strangely—as she looked at it Rory Hart’s expression became almost understanding. ‘I’ve done some thinking too,’ he said gravely. ‘And I’m glad as well. Think it over and we might even arrive at the same point.’
A timber hut in a clearing some distance on served as Forester’s Office. He collected the papers he had come for and they started to walk back. By now Haidee’s eyes had accustomed themselves to the darkness and her ears to the sounds about her. A second bird set up a barrage that could have been ack-ack fire and somewhere ahead two high notes bubbled through the conifers. It was excitingly like an owl, but to ask would have given away her ignorance. For all that she couldn’t help her eyes raking the darkness. Yet another bird scolded and Rory chuckled: ‘There’s an owl about.’
‘Yes. I thought I heard it.’
‘We’ve had a lot of tawnies round here.’ He raised his eyes to a clump of oak. ‘Last spring there was a nest in that hollow. Toby did his best to lose an eye over it.’ He left the gruesomeness unexplained and went on irritably, ‘You might as well know, Suzanne, we’ve a problem there.’
Again, she was caught in a maze. ‘We’ve a problem.’ Why ‘we’?
‘If there’s anything I can do....’ she began.
‘I don’t know that there is, but I think you should be at least cognizant. He doesn’t use his head. He won’t watch. He won’t think. And he won’t work—unless he chooses. I seem to spend my time hammering him.’
From what she had seen of him that came easily. ‘You wouldn’t take my help, but I’d advocate a dose of love and affection.’
‘Your brand?’ It was a sneer. ‘You’re quite right. I wouldn’t even wish that on your cat. I may be hard, Suzanne, but at least I stay with it.’
Unquestionably, Suzanne, whatever the trouble had been, had not. ‘As I didn’t,’ Haidee owned softly. ‘Forgive me. I didn’t think.’
Surprisingly, the hard face softened. ‘I’ll say this for you, Johnny. Your temper’s improved. If I’d said that ten years ago you’d have flown in my face like one of these blessed owls.’
The atmosphere had lightened and she felt herself suddenly in time with it. ‘I haven’t seen once since!’ she said laughingly.
‘No?’ He too seemed to be catching the new tempo. ‘Well, that’s soon remedied. They’re not far away.’
He dipped in his coat pocket and produced a torch with a red beam which he focused not at the branches as Haidee had expected but on the ground under the trees. ‘Pellets,’ he said briefly. ‘If there are pellets there have to be owls.’
There were plenty of pellets. He showed them to her, studied the trees for a minute and then broke off a dead branch and used it to tap on the trunk with the largest scattering of pellets. Almost at once a cock tawny flew out of a hole and was caught in the red light trained upon him. He flew quite silently, his big head giving him the absurd look of an alarm clock, and pitched on top of a birch. Rory put him up again and he circled above them, so clear in the moonlight that the stripes on his wings were visible.
Giveaway or not, Haidee gazed after him raptly. ‘Thanks. That was marvellous.’ She looked back at her suddenly silent companion. Moonlight gave his long features the sheen of marble and he was standing as though like the giants round him he had become rooted to the ground.
Fantasy must, she thought, be infectious. This one had now spread to her. She couldn’t move either. Like a stoated rabbit she stared back, trembling, waiting ... It was a feeling unmatched in her experience, half thrill, half pain.
And then slowly sublimation took place. That which seemed to have turned to vapour solidified again. Rory was no longer a satyr but a man in a green rain jacket. What had she feared? Against what had she been gathering herself? So silly, all of it, as silly as Jennie had found the thought of her being an enchantress.
Rory was walking on. He took long strides and like the tawny he was a little ‘front heavy’. Hastily she fell into step. Constraint had fallen on both of them and they went silently. Haidee’s tired eyes indeed were taking a rest.
They saw the path ahead vaguely as a strait between curtains of dark.
Until—it opened! A head poked up and froze. She saw it as bearlike with black and white stripes. It was there for only a second and then it vanished, but she’d seen it—a ghost, a monster, coming out of the ground...
Terror clutched her. She gasped and somehow found herself in Rory’s arms. At first it was abstract and shapeless. He was strong, protecting, comforting.
‘What was it? Did you see it?’ she quavered.
‘It,’ he said gently, ‘was a boar badger probably twice as scared as you. It’s all right,’ as her head jerked shamefacedly, ‘I know. They do look like ghosts when they pop up like that. But now that he’s got wind of us we certainly won’t see him again.’
‘A badger?’ She was mortified, and apprehensive. Could he fail to ask himself what had come over Suzanne? ‘I’m sorry. I feel such a fool.’
‘Don’t then. I’ve told you, brock can look quite unearthly on a dark night.’ Incredibly the thought of Suzanne did not seem to have entered his head.
But in the next second she knew this was not the case. The eyes regarding her had changed. Emotion laced them that had nothing to do with kindness or comfort. ‘Suzanne, I can’t play games any longer. In God’s name where did you get to?’
‘I told you ... Dublin ...’ Her heart fluttered into her throat.
‘Come off it,’ he said roughly. ‘I’m talking about ten years ago. You were with Freeman, weren’t you?’
All she could do—it seemed ineffectual—was to shake her head. Wordlessly. Pleadingly.
‘If I’d found you I’d have had his guts.’ He paused and repeated himself. ‘I’d have had his guts.’
Haidee had her back to a sycamore. His hands, each side of her, rested against the silk-smooth trunk. The look on his face shocked her. The past had been dead and buried and she’d raked it up. Had she set out to wreak retribution for the ravaged squirrel population of Glenglass, she could have done its Forester no greater disservice than to confront him with the love affair that had come to nothing. Now it seemed imperative to stop him hoping again.
‘I thought—I hoped—that was all over,’ she said awkwardly. ‘It’s so long ago.’ It was puzzling that he should keep on referring to ten years; surely it was fifteen.
‘It makes no difference.’
‘I hoped it would.’
‘That’s why you stayed away?’
‘Partly.’
‘And called yourself Brown?’
The waters were growing deeper every second. She could only nod.
‘Because you couldn’t stomach me?’
‘Please
don’t put it that way.’
‘What’s the alternative?’
‘Just say it wouldn’t have worked.’ She braced herself. ‘I’m sorry I came back. It wasn’t an easy decision. But I had to think of my mother and I felt you would have written me off long ago.’
‘You really thought it that simple?’ The voice rose, marvelling. ‘Good grief, Suzanne, how naive can you get?’
‘Rory, please! I am sorry. I’ve said so. Can’t you...’ She found herself looking pleadingly into his gaunt face. ‘Can’t you just hate me? I hate myself.’
She supposed he would say she was being naive again. Surprisingly he didn’t. Even more surprisingly, she thought for one moment that he was about to smile. The folded mouth twitched slightly and was still.
I must look so goofy, she thought, all eyes.
‘Can’t I just hate you?’ he echoed. ‘What makes you think I don’t? Ten—fifteen—twenty—all the years I’ve known you it’s been a toss-up. It still is.’ The tanned forehead came nearer till it brushed her own.
There had been no tenderness in the words and there was little in the gesture. It had such a near-animal quality that it brought her a dart of fear. She stiffened, but to break away was impossible. And then, with a power hitherto unsuspected, her own body began to respond. Her lips which at the start had been shy and gauche became intuitive. The best way she could describe it was that it was like finding a good dance partner.
It ended quite suddenly. The hard mouth lifted and she saw his face again. A face that looking into hers seemed unbelievably to be saying: ‘I’m sorry.’
Impression was all she had to go on. He spoke not a word neither at that moment nor for the rest of the walk back to the house.
Toby, still at the table, seemed to have lost his jailer. Questioned on her whereabouts, he looked self-righteous. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been working.’
‘I forgot to mention,’ his father observed, ‘we have a comedian as well as a dunce. Did she go out?’ he pursued sharply.
‘No. She went upstairs. Do you want to see what I’ve done?’ He shoved the exercise book across. Haidee thought Rory would have contributed a word of praise. He didn’t.
‘What the dickens is she doing upstairs? Have you been acting the fool?’
It was unjust, Haidee felt sure of that, and thoughtless. Had he no eyes? Could he not see how Toby’s face had clouded?
‘I haven’t,’ the child asserted angrily. ‘I haven’t done anything.’
‘All right,’ Rory snapped. Looking at him now, no one could say he was thoughtless, at least not where Jennie was concerned. ‘She’s upset,’ he said worriedly. ‘I’ve seen this coming all day.’
Duty seemed to be staring Haidee in the face. ‘Should I go to her?’
‘Oh, lord, Suzanne, I don’t know. I suppose so, but watch that tongue of yours,’ was the unflattering reply.
Of all the threads in the web that had bound these two, Haidee reflected, one thread alone ran clear from beginning to end. Whatever his physical need of her, Rory had no opinion of Suzanne except as troublemaker and jade.
He changed his mind somewhat irritably about letting her go upstairs alone. ‘Wait. You won’t know which parts are safe,’ and went with her up the remaining flight. ‘Jennie! Are you up here?’ A hen calling her chicks could not have sounded more concerned.
The call was answered in Jennie’s voice with its abiding quality of anxiety. A room door opened and she came out holding the tweed jacket Rory had been wearing that night on the docks at Heysham. ‘Sorry,’ she apologized more anxiously than ever. ‘Did you want me?’
‘Don’t I always?’ Haidee had not expected the tease or the twinkle. ‘I thought you were lost,’ he added. ‘What on earth were you doing?’
Jennie, however, seemed not to realize that she was being favoured. She answered as breathlessly as though she had been at fault. ‘In my old room, putting this button on. Sorry.’
‘Jennie’s not like us,’ Antonia had said. Who was Jennie like? What had brought this air of carrying the world on her slender shoulder? Had she ever worn a mini? She seemed the embodiment of her midi dress. It was a paradox perhaps—Jennie was as panoplied in good works as any Victorian sampler—but looking at the snub shiny nose in the grave young face Haidee’s heart went out to it in a rush of compassion that dwarfed all personal fears.
Here were three ill-assorted people living under one roof. Surely there was something she could do for them besides making an ill-assorted fourth?
No time like the present.
‘My turn to be mum,’ she said on impulse. ‘What does anyone like for supper?’
Toby said: ‘Cocoa!’ and rubbed his middle disarmingly. So cocoa it was. She made it sweet and milky and put a biscuit in the saucer. Jennie straightened the long brown curtains and Rory unexpectedly stirred himself to make up the fire. Brand poked a creamy paw through the bars of his chair and Toby shook it.
It was not earth-shattering, but it was a beginning and in its quiet way it went on. Rory said shortly: ‘All right, show us what you’ve done,’ and stretched out his hand for the exercise book. Haidee asked Jennie about shopping and together they made out a list of needs for the weekend.
Toby, the first to go to bed, bawled a heart-warming: ‘Come and say goodnight, Johnny!’ from his room, and when she did so, hurled a pillow at her and collapsed into giggling glee. She had recovered the weapon and was beating him with it when a floorboard creaked behind her.
Rory, his face inscrutable, was standing in the doorway.
‘How do you find being mum?’ he asked as she joined him in the corridor. ‘Not too painful, I trust?’
Not knowing what else to do with him, Haidee took Brand to her room for the night. Brand was not malicious. He had been made a displaced person, but at least now they were together. He waited till she turned her back and then sprang forgivingly on to the shoulders of her green and white flowered nightgown.
She realized, amusement mingling with pain, that Brand, if not entirely at home, was settling. His familiar cluck of pleasure had just made itself heard. And there had been moments in the strange mixum-gatherum evening when she herself had also felt that way. The people in such moments floated before her now—Jennie’s plump cheeks and wistful dark eyes. Toby’s grin with the uneven lower teeth, and Rory’s wink of achievement when he’d put up the owl. What a strange man he was! Like one of his trees, perhaps. She had got into bed and she sat there clasping her knees. They had passed a giant oak that night as they’d walked back through the wood—a king of trees standing alone in a clearing. As, indeed, Rory had been left, first by Suzanne and then by losing his wife.
Her hand strayed to Brand’s golden form and stroked it absently.
‘Okay?’ the voice which had been in her thoughts inquired suddenly from outside the door.
‘Okay,’ she returned drowsily. Kind of him to ask. She was very comfortable. The room was warm, the bed soft, and the half-drawn curtains gave a long view of serrated ridges and a high-flung moon.
A squeaking sound, and as she looked at it, the door handle turned and the door opened. Brand’s tail swished and he leaped off the quilt. Rory’s voice murmured something that she could not catch. He was standing in the doorway and he was ready for bed. Haidee’s staring eyes were dulled by shock. They registered slowly—bold striped pyjamas, half open jacket, bare feet thrust into slippers.
She just stopped herself from crying out. There must be a reason. He had said something. There must be a reason.
Disconcertingly, he did not give it. He just glanced at the light in the corridor and stretched out a navy and grey striped arm. The light clicked out and he stepped back into the bedroom and closed the door. It was all quite matter-of-fact.
‘Wh-what did you say just then?’ she gasped.
‘I said good,’ he told her equably.
Good? Her head swam. He couldn’t mean...
‘You said okay, I said good,’ he repeated, an
d looked more closely at her petrified form. The nightgown had a scoop neck and white lacing. It also had long bell-shaped sleeves and was voluminous and very decent. But nothing quelled the panic thought that the dark blue eyes in front of her were not concerned with the nightgown.
‘I didn’t ... I ...’ Her throat dried.
‘Oh, come on! Don’t be coy about it. It’s one way we were always compatible.’ He went round with appalling naturalness to the other side of the bed.
It was a frozen-to-the-ground nightmare except that she was frozen to a bed. Seconds ticked like tocsins as he turned back first the dark blue quilt and then the flowery sheet. No preamble. No hesitation. But that, she supposed, was the way he would act when this was not the first time.
But not with her! Suddenly all the tocsins seemed to be clanging simultaneously.
‘No. No, I mean it.’ She grabbed at the bedclothes. ‘No!’
‘What is this? An act?’ The puzzlement sounded quite genuine, but at least the large hand had loosed its hold on the sheet.
Its owner stood looking down at her. He had gone quiet and she sensed that he didn’t plan to take her against her will. It was still alarming to have him standing there so near her, to see where the sunburn stopped on his neck and to notice, because she could not help it, the dark fuzz on his chest. Idiotic, she knew, to flutter so. These things were natural, he certainly thought them natural...
Illogically, that fact made it the more scaring. And yet how dared he? Suddenly Suzanne Desmond went by the board. She thought only of Haidee Brown.
‘Will you kindly stop pestering me and go away?’ Outrage put an edge on her voice. ‘I didn’t expect to lock my door. It seems I should have.’
They weren’t minced words, but she had not bargained for the change in his face. The soft skin round his eyes had a sudden crepey look.
‘I’m—sorry,’ she jerked awkwardly.
It seemed to ignite the fuse. ‘Sorry? God’s fish, do you think I need it spelled out?’
‘I hope not! I think we might spare each other that.’
'Do you? Why change, for heaven’s sake? You spared me nothing ten years ago. It’s no blind good our trying to deceive ourselves. You’re sorry I’m not Freeman, that’s all.’
Dear Deceiver Page 8