‘Don’t argue,’ Rory snapped. ‘How dare you be so irresponsible! And don’t look down. I’ve enough on my hands without having to fetch you up a second time.’
How dared she? How dared he! Hart by name and hart by nature. Thinking all women were his hinds. And she was sure her shoulder was bruised.
Anger made her glow. It also gave her strength.
‘I can’t see what all the fuss is about. Toby didn’t exactly sit on the sideline either.’
‘Toby at least took a calculated risk. You...’
‘Oh well, if you’re going to talk about calculations.’ At least she had her foot on the heath a few yards from where the brown car had been abandoned at a reckless angle. ‘I never did get my sums right.’
‘No?’ Surprisingly he looked less grim. ‘How right you are, Haidee Brown. How right you are.’
Haidee was put in the car and told to wait. There was little else she could do, for Rory pocketed the keys as he went once more over the rim of scrub. She guessed why shortly afterwards when she heard two shots.
So it had been for nothing. The does had had to die. And almost by her hand. If she had not been so stupid they might have got away. If she had not told Paul about Willie Byrne the poachers might never have known where to come. Only for her the spotted deer would still be feeding in the dell. She closed her eyes and there it all was, as she was sure it would be to the end of her days.
With it came a legion of regrets and things that had gone wrong. What had she brought Glenglass, she who loved it on sight, but loss, strife, and jealousy? And what had she brought its forester but worry and trouble and the unleashing of the past.
There remained only one recompense. She must go, and as quickly as possible.
From the voices floating upwards and the fact that a forestry truck was also parked on the heath she knew that Rory was not performing his unenviable task in solitude. He came back, however, alone.
‘You heard, I suppose? Well, don’t worry,’ he said kindly as he got into the car. ‘We had to put two down, but I think the rest have a chance. Willie says so, anyway.’ Old Willie Byrne, it seemed, had come back with him, and, astonishingly, was now down in the dell with some of the forestry workers. ‘Willie would climb Mount Everest if he thought his deer were in trouble. I’d back him against any vet if I had to.’ He looked at Haidee’s face and shook his head. ‘Cheer up, girl. There’s no use looking like that. I told you once before that death is part of the cycle for a wild creature. It comes and it’s accepted. Tomorrow morning the others will be back feeding as though nothing had happened. Toby knows that too. I’ve left him there with Willie. The vet’s on his way.’
They were plain words, but they didn’t lack comfort, and not the least of it was the mention of Toby. This, at least, had been granted her, to see him in one morning turn into a man. It only remained for her to go in as good odour as possible.
With the engine running, Rory spoke. ‘Well, Haidee Brown, which of us goes in first?’
‘Do you mind telling me how you know my name?’
‘Not in the least,’ he said calmly. ‘I knew it before I met you. The first morning when I knocked on your door and your next-door neighbour told me where to look for you, she told me a lot more besides.’ His lips quirked. ‘Whetted my appetite, in fact.’
‘You set a trap for me.’
‘Admitted,’ he agreed cheerfully. ‘The moment I heard Freeman’s name I knew you were here for the beer. Well, there’s no beer, neither Jack nor Antonia had anything left to leave, but I don’t imagine Freeman knows that, and I thought you should have a damn good run for your money,’
‘I had.’ She said it quite sincerely and he coloured. It was part of the young Rory and endearing.
Ten minutes later the whole story had been told. It finished in unplanned confusion: ‘I suppose you think I should have got out of it. I daresay I could have, not minding too much about Antonia. We still don’t know, actually. In the end she just died.’
‘Most people do,’ he commented quietly.
‘Everything went wrong really.’ Once started it was as hard to stop as it had been that day with Mother Mary. ‘Jennie didn’t need me except this week a little, and it must have been awful for you, having everything raked up again.’ His gaze had narrowed. ‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ she jerked. ‘Losing Suzanne and then having me so like her you couldn’t tell us apart.’
A laugh interrupted. She blinked amazedly and heard another and another.
‘So like her, did you say? God’s fish, girl, why do you think I used to say “Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye”? You dropped a clanger almost every five minutes. I started off wanting to teach you a lesson and I ended up, Lord help me, trying to save your skin for you.’
What a man! ‘I’m sure it was very kind of you,’ she said frostily. ‘But all in all I don’t think I’m all that bad at looking after myself.’
‘I don’t think you are either,’ he admitted, it almost seemed gloomily. ‘You’ve had me running round in small circles trying to keep you away from Freeman. It was never on, was it?’
‘Never.’
‘I wish I’d known. I never did know what to think.’ He looked quite indignant. ‘Even when I’d decided you were just the pawn...’
‘The pawn?’ she echoed sharply. ‘Me?’
‘Don’t interrupt. Freeman uses women. They seem to find him attractive.’
‘Bully for them. He doesn’t use me. Or any man. I paddle my own canoe. Oh, honestly!’ It was too much. ‘If I’d known that’s what you were thinking I wouldn’t have stayed one hour.’
‘And if that had been what I was thinking I wouldn’t have put up with you!’ Rory retorted. ‘Everything didn’t go wrong, as a matter of fact,’ he added. ‘Toby’s fond of you and you were very good for him. I’m grateful.’
‘Grateful?’ It was too silly. There, she’d found such riches and was taking away such happy memories. ‘I hope you’re proud—of Toby, I mean. After today any father...’ Why was he looking so thoughtful? Puzzled, she halted.
‘I am proud,’ he said simply. ‘Proud and thankful. But not as “any father”. Do you understand?’
She didn’t. She shook her head.
‘Suzanne was pregnant when she married me,’ he said factually. ‘Nothing else would have persuaded her. She just had a memory lapse. She forgot to tell me.’ To the question flickering in Haidee’s eyes, he said: ‘No, not for certain. I don’t think he did either. She would have been afraid of losing him. He took off very easily.’
And took her with him, Haidee recalled. And then took off again. Alone. Was it Tokyo Paul had said—or the camel train to Iraq?
She was shocked at how her romantic picture had crumbled. Suzanne with her fabled aura of courage stood revealed as coward and cheat. Bad enough if she had left Rory to care for their own child, there were no words for passing him the charge of another man’s. And since, almost certainly, Toby was Paul’s, what doubtful traits could he not have inherited? To look at him today was surely to see a triumph of husbandry.
‘Thinking of Toby...’
‘I’ve done my share of that,’ Rory put in.
‘I was only going to say—he may be a hummel’s calf, but he’s going to be a royal.’
This drew a smile. ‘He’s done well. You helped.’
She felt a little overcome. ‘What happened to Suzanne?’
‘Oh, it’s a sad story.’ He sounded weary. ‘A sad story that went on too long. Did you see a documentary last year called Gail Is Dead?’
She nodded recalling the tragic downhill road of the young drug addict round which the film had been built and all at once quickening with horrified comprehension.
‘Something like that,’ Rory acknowledged briefly. ‘A mess. I saw her sometimes, mostly in hospitals when they’d send for me. She could have come back, but she wouldn’t. And I never told Antonia. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you were too when you deceived her. It’s on the cards. At least
we both thought we were doing right at the time.’ He shrugged. ‘And it’s all over now. It’s a long long time ago.’
In light of this forbearance, the side kicks of the masquerade were doubly poignant.
‘It was until I brought it back to you. You could feel very bitter towards me.’
‘Nonsense, Glad to have you,’ he said uncomfortably. ‘Stay a while longer if you’d like. I know Toby would be charmed. He’s going to miss you.’
A temptation which had to be resisted. ‘And I him,’ Haidee returned. ‘But I must go home today. I’ve so much to catch up on.’
As the house hove into view she remembered Brand and looked anxiously along steps and windowsills.
‘What is it?’ Rory demanded, and when told was unconcerned. ‘You can’t have looked properly. He’ll be in the house. On someone’s bed, I suppose.’
‘He’s not,’ she insisted. Rory was not to know of the getaway from the stable.
‘In that case he’s probably caught in a trap. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
Need his face have been quite so impassive? Recently, she’d fancied he was growing quite fond of Brand.
He had gone into the house and after a few abortive calls she followed dejectedly. Every man’s hand seemed against her and Brand’s continued absence was the last straw. That fox they’d seen could have savaged him—or a trap as Rory had so heartlessly suggested.
A moment later she heard a door open. ‘Come here!’ he called resignedly.
Brand had been ill-treated, starved, imprisoned, thrown on a hard cold world. In such circumstances a chap could be said to be living rough. Brand was offended. He sat flatly on the eiderdown on Rory’s bed not looking at them. His face was turned to the wall, his bosom and tucked-over paws a little like a plaited cholla loaf.
‘But he can’t have—how did he get in...’ Haidee began incredulously.
‘Don’t look at me,’ Rory said shortly. ‘I don’t care for animals on my bed.’
Of course he didn’t. How like Brand, and how in heaven’s name had he sneaked back into the house without her seeing him? She was cross with him; she was overjoyed to see him, of course, but he was provoking. She gave him a tip of irritation and he drew pettishly away.
‘Come on, take him out of here,’ Rory commanded.
He followed them into the corridor, closing the door behind him rather more ostentatiously than was necessary. ‘And another thing. What’s this supposed to mean?’ He pulled the note she had left him out of his pocket and flourished it. ‘Are you here or are you gone or are you going?’
‘I’m going!’ she flashed angrily. ‘And the sooner the better.’
‘All right. Why the cloak and dagger act? I’m not stopping you. I’ll give you a lift.’
‘I don’t want a lift,’ she said crossly.
‘Suit yourself.’ He looked with interest at suitcase, cat basket and various other odds and bobs. It was a strange fact that that morning they had not looked heavy. Now they did. They looked overpowering.
‘It’s nine miles to Enniskerry,’ Rory remarked triumphantly. He glanced at his wrist. ‘That’s where I got you, that’s where I’ll leave you. But first I have to look at something. You’d better come with me, it won’t take long.’
As she hesitated he flicked a finger at Brand. ‘Shut that cat up somewhere. What about the stable?’
‘Oh no! He can open the door.’ She checked uncertainly. ‘At least I think he can.’
‘Do you?’ Once before he had looked at her like that, eyes solemn, cheeks straight, mouth buttoned against laughter. ‘S-m-a-r-t g-u-y’ he spelled as though the praise might go to Brand’s head.
Light, or at least half light, dawned. ‘It was you! You let him out!’
He said neither yea or nay, but his eyes twinkled.
‘I’ve been terribly worried,’ she reproached.
‘What do you think I’ve been?’ It was not asked urgently, but next instant it was back to business. ‘Come on, then, let’s go.’
Haidee had known that the Division had a building in course of erection about a quarter mile from Glenglass House, but she had never seen beyond the wooden hoarding that enclosed it. Today the hoarding had been taken down and on an island of green stood a new bungalow.
Whatever about the commercial rewards of conifers, no such trees were here. Limes and little rowans flanked one side, three holm oaks, their green dappled with sunshine, bordered the other. There was a satin-trunked beech and a great oak in a pool of its stalkless mitred leaves. Only a quarter mile from the big house, but it could have been ten times as far, and because the wild life of the forest had been there before the bungalow it was likely they’d hang on to what they held. Squirrels would play in the beech, owls pitch on the oak, vixens lie up with their cubs in the green banks. And was it symbolical that the steep new roof was green?
Growth was the message of life, for branches that had been lopped, for fawn and leveret, for boys with lopsided grins and for hearts that had mourned. Here even in winter the days would be green and burgeoning.
She came back with a start to the bungalow itself. It had a lot of windows, some bow-shaped; she liked that. Better still was the sun porch along one side.
‘I thought it was time to let the dog see the rabbit,’ Rory observed.
Haidee could not tell which of them was the dog, but it was a very nice rabbit.
It gripped her. She saw a flower arrangement on the window in the hall and in the long white sitting-room she saw a plain carpet, cornflower blue, and over the chiselled stone fireplace a Wicklow landscape in oils with a lot of deep blues. A piano would go beautifully inside the door. How silly. Few people these days had pianos. She saw Rory’s dark honey carpet in the little dining-room and in the bathroom she saw a blue bath, a blue and green paisley decor and a pot of ivy. It did not matter that it was not her house, that in fact she hadn’t the slightest idea whose it was.
‘It’s mine,’ said Rory. ‘And I’m not falling over any pot plants while I’m having a bath, that’s for sure.’
He had thought of a dark green bath and a pitch pine effect vinyl.
‘I should hate that.’
‘I thought you might, actually,’ he mocked.
At that moment, however, all that was uppermost in her thoughts was that it was all over. The deception was known and pardoned and there were no more traps. She was laughing—at least she should be. In fact, she was seeing a face that had everything on offer in the way of quirks, lines and mischief. She was looking at a long brown chin, a green waterproof jacket and the sweater she had washed last week. She was thinking of Jennie who would some day come home again and she was knowing that for herself it was ‘Peace go with you’, and that she didn’t want peace. It had been such a lovely war.
‘There’s a rush on, you see,’ he was explaining. ‘My marriage date’s come forward.’
To the end of her days Haidee thought she would associate the ring of bare boards with an ebbing away of feeling. There was no sense in putting off a personal black spot, but she realized that was exactly what she had been doing. Telling herself that he couldn’t marry Jennie for two or three years. Giving herself only one bad thing at a time.
How spineless. If a part of her had to be cut off far better get it over and done with.
‘Congratulations,’ she said composedly. ‘I hope you’ll be very happy.’
‘I will if I can get these chaps to meet their deadline.’
She felt her head spin. ‘I think I’ve been very wide of the mark. Are you not marrying Jennie?’
‘J-Jennie!’ Eyes went wide. He said it again, stuttering: ‘Marry Jennie! Are you mad? Jennie’s a child.’
‘She loves you.’
‘Not now! Not since I washed her face. Didn’t you hear about that? I had to do something. I’ve seen it coming for ages and that morning you slept in she turned up to breakfast with green muck on her eyes and purple muck on her mouth. She wouldn’t clean it off
herself, so I did it for her. I told her the rut was over.’
‘Rory! How could you! She wouldn’t...’
‘Wouldn’t understand? She understood perfectly. So did I. When someone has their eye on me I can see it a mile off.’ The twinkle was deep and infuriating, the lips stayed firm.
Rory for red, she thought, hart for a ten-pointer stag and forester—as he had told her himself—an old Somerset name for a wild deer. Add them up and even for one who didn’t get her sums right you had one arrogant monarch of the glen.
‘You’re just like your name,’ she accused rashly. ‘You think all the hinds are running after you.’ Could he—appalling thought—have felt that about her?
The emptiness of the room made her words echo the louder and she was ashamed of them. If like his namesake he were to roar in anger she couldn’t blame him.
But Rory didn’t roar. ‘Not all, unfortunately,’ he said artlessly. ‘The one I want is running away.’
Haidee had never known anything like the stillness except perhaps in the middle of the night when she’d awakened from a dream.
The dark blue eyes themselves were still, as though they’d come to rest.
‘How do I catch this one?’ Rory asked gently. ‘There are no more cats to shut up.’ He raised her hands and held them against his chest.
‘It looks like you’ve done it—actually,’ she said.
Dear Deceiver Page 21