Dear Deceiver

by Doris E. Smith

  ‘A doe?’ she repeated. ‘Are there any here now?’

  ‘With this lot?’ He drew derisive attention to the other visitors, the cars and the postcard stall. ‘No. But they’re not a hundred miles away.’ There were red and fallow deer in Glenmalure—he pointed south over the mountains—a stag had been shot this summer. And some even nearer, home, he added. ‘We’ll see if we can find them for you before you go.’ Go? It was an icy little word. And yet how could she be so foolish? She had to go—she wanted to go—she had come only because she’d been tricked.

  Most Irish children could recite:

  ‘Glendalough whose gloomy shore

  Skylark never warbles o’er:

  and certainly the lake in the gorge was not cosy. Haidee thought 'sinister’ would not have been too strong a word.

  Only baguettes of light on the dark water showed that above the ceiling of pine trees the sun was shining. It made bright the spits of gorse and, more strikingly, the plumage of swans on the black surface. If you looked down for too long at the water rippling past the branches of cones it made you feel dizzy, and if you were imaginative the shades of Kevin and Kathleen were not too far away.

  ‘Why do you suppose he threw her in the lake?’

  Rory’s lips twitched. ‘That’s one for history. I should say myself self-preservation.’

  It seemed ludicrous. A horrific price to exact for too much love.

  ‘Love?’ It was a sharp humourless sound. ‘She could have destroyed him. And I mean that.’

  They were theorizing on a legend, Haidee reminded herself—or were they?

  ‘It wasn’t a saint on that ledge,’ Rory went on reflectively. ‘It was a desperate man. That’s if the story’s true and round here you’d have a job denying it. As I see it, Kathleen was Kevin’s canker. He had his moment of truth there, thirty feet up.’

  Toby had gone ahead, tagging willingly on to a bushy-tailed mongrel who was also feeling left out. Rory stopped walking and lifted creased eyes to the polished grey of the opposite cliff.

  ‘There are women like that, you know. Women who drive men mad. Harpies. Flames. Something we keep on burning our wings at. Until the only thing to do is to run. That was your man’s trouble. Up there it was no road.’

  ‘Now wait a minute. She wasn’t exactly playing hard to get.’

  ‘Not then. Lucifer gathers his choicest spoils in his velvet hand. He has to feel merciful to use the grenade. And don’t forget the traditional tool-in-trade. He is the father of lies.’

  ‘Are we—speaking personally?’ Haidee faltered.

  Rory turned round to her, slowly, deliberately, as though he had come a long way. His face had a wiped dean look. It was probably no more than seconds but it seemed a long time before he spoke. And then he said simply:

  ‘No. No, Suzanne. Time put that right—and Mrs. Brown.’

  They had walked to the tip of the lake to a plateau of sheer rock, snow posts and pale blue sky. The inlets below were a clear brown and a white gull was flapping in to a strip of biscuit sand. Back towards Glendalough the lake itself stretched blue. Now it was a pretty view, friendly—and forgiving.

  ‘Do you think people ever get completely away from their past?’ Haidee asked tremulously.

  ‘Some do, some don’t,’ he said laconically. ‘I think you have,’ he added devastatingly. ‘That’s why I want us to talk.’

  ‘Oh...’ Her eyes had widened and she knew she wasn’t wearing her glasses. Prolong this conversation and she’d be in dead trouble. She knew that too and yet against all reason she felt a glow of excitement.

  And then: ‘Daddy, make the echo!’ Toby came galloping back. ‘I tried. I can’t.’

  ‘Of course not. You want to get back in the gorge,’ Rory said shortly.

  Impossible to tell his thoughts as they walked back along the path. Still more so when he cupped his hands to his mouth and sent a hail flying out over the black lake to crash and splinter on the rocks near Kevin’s Bed. Time and again he sent it and always the echoes came back, plaintive and unearthly. One word. One searching word. Suzanne.

  Tom and Jennie were waiting in the car park. Haidee hoped it was imagination that they reacted to Toby’s call as though glad to be relieved of each other’s company. The tea, Jennie said with eager politeness, had been ‘very nice’, but the soft pinkness her cheeks had started out with had faded sadly. Walking across to the car, Haidee had to accept the fact that, though Jennie was the reason she had come to Glenglass, she had not as yet performed any service for the younger girl. Rather, it seemed, the reverse.

  It was a large car park, and newly constructed, a table between the hills and today, back end of autumn as it was, the fine Sunday had brought out a capacity crowd. Long hair and bright clothes, and here and there an outrageous Stetson or a cloak gave a surprisingly medieval air. Non-Irish accents abounded and two Indian girls, each with a scarlet dot in the centre of her brown forehead, were waiting to enter a car near Rory’s. In contrast to the oriental reds, purples and gold in their saris, a black-habited nun was approaching with two elderly companions.

  The nun herself was elderly, her face a network of wrinkles against the smooth white band of her wimple. Even in age, however, it was a handsome face, and to Haidee, who in passing had had the full of it, as clearcut an example of Celtic bone structure as the Indian girls were of their country.

  Rory, feeling for his keys, had dropped a pace behind and now quite suddenly his voice sounded: ‘Good afternoon, Reverend Mother. Great weather.’

  It was warmly answered: ‘Mr. Hart. And—Jennie.’ Hands went out and were clasped. Introductions were murmured. From the nun: ‘My brother and sister-in-law,’ and from Rory: ‘You know my son, I think. Toby.’

  Haidee went back as Toby’s small hand was being given. The nun was saying: ‘Indeed I know Toby. There aren’t many in Glenglass who don’t. His smile is as big as himself.’ It caused the first shocked inklings to percolate. ‘Reverend Mother.’ ‘Glenglass.’ She's Mother Mary. The hair rose on Haidee’s spine. I looked at her, she looked at me. And we walked past each other.

  ‘And here’s someone I needn’t introduce.’ Was it imagination that Rory’s voice also sounded strange? ‘Forward, Suzanne. Don’t be shy.’

  ‘Suzanne!’ The astonished ‘about turn’ was elastic as a girl’s. Blue eyes over high cheekbones stared for a second as though they could not believe what they saw. And then: ‘My dear child,’ the old nun said simply, and held out not one hand but two.

  Rory disdained returning by the same road and instead of veering towards Laragh he swung left climbing through Wicklow Gap, and past Ireland’s controversial first pump storage scheme on Turlough Hill. The road was a lizard slithering through brown and sandy country. There were wire fences with wool on them and sheep grazing in the long shallow dips. A trail of smoke among the blue creases of the hills marked strip burning.

  Bleak and beautiful it stretched, mile after mile, fold after fold, a brown prairie, man’s only touch the snow markers. A place, Haidee thought longingly, where one could stretch not only one’s legs but one’s mind. And rest one’s eyes and forget...

  Forget many things—Mother Mary not recognizing her, the swift movement in Jennie’s eyes as she’d realized what had happened, and then the aged Mother Superior affectionately making it worse: ‘Dear child, you look so different. You’ve come back as we always prayed you would—a new person.’

  It was unusual for Jennie not to be fully immersed in any discussion on forestry, but on this occasion taciturn wasn’t the word for her. Mother Mary? Haidee wondered uneasily, looking at the heavy eyes and pinched cheeks. In the end she decided to risk a snub and when they reached home she drew Jennie aside: ‘Are you all right, Jen? You don’t look it.’

  A touch of cramps, Jennie whispered, looking embarrassed. It was nothing. Honestly. She was used to it. When Haidee prescribed bed and a hot jar she said touchingly: ‘Heavens no. I don’t bother.’

  Hi
gh time someone bothered, Haidee decided. ‘Well, let’s make history then, shall we?’

  The bedroom was as shabby as all those rooms which had not been handed over for Rory’s use and chilly. Fortunately there was a power plug. She carried in the electric fire from her own room and filled a hot water jar also her own. ‘Cuddle that and tell me what you’d like for supper. You’re going to stay put for a while.’

  ‘Suzanne,’ Jennie observed in a surprised tone, ‘you’re very bossy.’

  ‘ ’Fraid so. Always was,’ Haidee returned with a pat to the bed-clothes. ‘Do you mind?’

  Abruptly distressingly the child’s face crumpled and she jerked her head away. Release would have been good for her, but it was quickly controlled. ‘Promise you won’t tell Rory.’

  ‘Not if you don’t want me to,’ Haidee assured her. ‘But he’d understand, love. He knows how hard it is and he’s very fond of you.’

  The change was instant and near miraculous. A pale child in a gimmicky red nightshirt had got into bed; now she was pale no longer and you hardly noticed the garment for the wearer. Curtains of dark hair framed the luminous eyes. The little-girl pouty lips seemed to have shaped out into beauty. ‘Is he, Suzanne? Honestly?’ Jennie asked.

  For Haidee a startling flash of insight. In a year or so what might not happen? The same interests. The same outlook. And who seeing Rory with Jennie could doubt his affection?

  If the business about Suzanne were tidied up and Rory free to marry, Jennie would surely be the happiest antidote for the past. She pushed the thought away. No time now to work it any further. Three men were waiting to be fed and one of them had already ordered—‘bangers’ and fried bread.

  But that night, curled in the centre of the wide bed Rory had consistently refused to take back, there it was again, the new Forester’s residence with Jennie at eighteen or nineteen its young mistress. And there she herself was too, back in Dollymount with the Brent geese and Brand.

  Would he feel it a terrible come-down? His nose, more uppish than ever, had had the time of its life in Glenglass. His fur had grown thicker and the bars of rust on his tail were blatant as never before. She moved her legs and from on top of them and half asleep he gave his ungracious cluck.

  ‘Start getting used to it, bucko,’ she told him. ‘We’re not here to stay.’

  Was it coincidence that at that moment a cloud crossed over the moon?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Next morning Jennie was herself again and for once Toby did not dash to the breakfast half-dressed. He came to it from outside, his boots soaking and beads of mist shining on his hair.

  ‘Business,’ he said mysteriously when questioned. ‘It’s “Keep Your Eyes Open” week, remember. I think I’m on to something.’

  ‘You’ll be on to something you won’t like if you’re late for school,’ Rory remarked without interest. ‘Or don’t they beat these days?

  ‘Pity,’ he said gravely when Toby shook his head. ‘That way you’ll never be the man your father is.’

  Haidee welcomed the good humour but could not resist a maternal hand on the detective’s shoulder. His jacket as she’d suspected was also damp. Where had he been?

  ‘Nothing to say,’ Toby replied firmly. ‘Nothing to say at this stage.’

  Some time later she was making his bed and wondering if she dare reduce his dust gathering hoard of comics when the telephone rang and Jennie appeared in the doorway: ‘Someone for you. He says it’s very important.’

  ‘Very important: It could only be the hospital. Haidee was there in a moment. Instinctively she closed the door. ‘Suzanne Desmond speaking.’

  ‘Can you talk?’ a voice asked guardedly.

  Her heart missed a beat. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Can you talk?’ the voice repeated urgently.

  ‘Ye-es.’

  ‘Good, then. This is Paul.’

  Paul! After all these weeks. Where had he been? Irritably he explained that he’d been offered an ‘exclusive’ in Milan just after he’d finished the glass story and had only returned to Dublin last week. Calling out to Dollymount, he had learned her whereabouts from a neighbour.

  ‘Now listen, baby, I don’t know how you got yourself into Glenglass, but you’ve got to get out again—quick.’

  A bit much. Who did he think had got her there? she asked.

  ‘Cut that out, honey. I’m serious. Impersonation is a punishable offence.’

  ‘Paul, it was your idea,’ Haidee protested.

  ‘Originally, perhaps, but be reasonable. All I set up was two minutes at a deathbed. A few words, the touch of a hand—the sort of thing a nurse does if she has to. Not this. This is madness. You’ll never get away with it.’

  She was for a second literally speechless. When her lips moved again they had to do so fast. ‘You listen to me for a change. Too right you set it up and then you took off. I was the sitting duck. Antonia recovered consciousness and Rory came and fetched me back to the hospital. I had no choice. She was clear for several hours and I had to promise her I’d come here and stay with Jennie. How do you think I liked that?’

  ‘And they accepted you?’ He sounded incredulous.

  ‘Yes, they accepted me. I can’t talk about it now.’

  ‘Oh, look, love,’ his tone had changed. ‘I’m sorry. It was my fault, I suppose.’

  ‘Not suppose. It’s no doubt at all, actually,’ Haidee said shortly. ‘And I’m here till Antonia dies. That’s all there is to it.’

  There was a pause. ‘You’ve changed,’ Paul said slowly. ‘I thought you were a timid little thing. That night on the train you were full sure they’d spot your second class ticket and throw you out on the line. Now you’re even beginning to sound like a Desmond.’

  It was too silly, and besides, he was wasting time. ‘Have you a number? I can’t talk properly here.’

  ‘Sorry. I come and go.’

  ‘Oh, Paul!’ Urgency raised her voice a semi-tone. There was so much she had to know which he alone could tell. ‘Please. It’s not much to ask.’

  A draught of air sliced down her arm. The door had opened. Rory’s voice said: ‘I’m sorry,’ in a tone quite as cold as the air. Next second the door once more was shut.

  Feelings got the better of her. ‘Blast!’ He’d heard her say: ‘Paul’. She was convinced of it. And he’d think...

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Paul remarked humorously.

  ‘He heard me.’ Matters were not improved by a knowing chuckle from the other end. ‘Oh, it’s too silly,’ she exploded. ‘But that’s what he thinks.’

  She put the receiver back and hurried into the hall. Rory with papers in his hand was coming out of his bedroom. What unsporty fate, she wondered, had sent him back for them at just that moment? ‘I’m sorry if you wanted to use the phone,’ she blurted. ‘Paul rang to inquire for my mother.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Rory murmured sarcastically, and moved away.

  Foolishly, she pursued it. ‘You have no objection, I presume?’

  A stony face looked back at her. ‘Yes, you do presume, Suzanne.’ The voice matched it in hardness. ‘You presume a helluva lot. I used to think it part of your charm. Now it’s starting to be a bore.’ He came a pace nearer and lowered his voice somewhat belatedly. ‘I won’t stand for it again, girl, you can make your mind up on that.’

  As she stood speechless with fury he went on down the stairs.

  That afternoon when she made the usual pilgrimage with Jennie to the hospital the pull of home was almost irresistible. It was heightened when, yet again, Antonia failed to open her eyes. What good, Haidee questioned, was being produced? Whatever about three weeks ago, Jennie’s mother patently no longer needed peace of mind. It was hers, lapping her like a blanket. Would she wake again, even momentarily, in this life? The doctor thought not. He said so when they were leaving.

  As of now, an unnecessary deception. Purposeless for Antonia, humiliating for its practiser. Waiting at the pedestrian crossing Haidee fumed again
at the morning’s injustice. Why should she stay in Glenglass and expose herself to undeserved contempt?

  The light on the crossing changed. ‘About time!’ Jennie commented, stepping off the kerb.

  And time, girl, you did your stuff, Haidee thought, and slipped her hand through her companion’s arm. ‘Let’s go and look in Switzers and then we must get something for tea. Any suggestions?’

  Jennie was and must be her first care. The morning’s hurt had somehow to be ignored.

  It was surprisingly easy to do this, for when they reached Glenglass its atmosphere was not at all what she’d expected.

  ‘It’s beginning to look as though “Keep Your Eyes Open” week has come up with something,’ Rory remarked. He seemed to have forgotten the circumstances under which they had last spoken.

  ‘Are we going to tell them?’ Toby broke in warningly. ‘They said we weren’t to. They’re sending a man out from Dublin.’

  ‘The entire Special Branch and Riot Squad, I should think,’ his father said dryly.

  ‘We went to the Guards, you see. About that—that thing I was working on. But we can’t risk a leak, so I can’t tell you,’ Toby explained.

  That’s a bit thick,’ Jennie challenged. ‘We’re not going to leak it.’ She turned expectantly to Rory, but he shook his head. It was a solemn action.