Strange Recompense

by Catherine Airlie

  “You must miss your sister,” Sara ventured when the silence grew oppressive, but she was scarcely prepared for the girl’s reaction to her sympathy.

  The dark eyes flamed into hatred at the mention of her sister’s name and Jess moved into the shadows beside the dresser in the corner, busying her hands with some task which took her beyond Sara’s line of vision.

  “Really,” Sara said, “you’re anything but communicative, Jess. You are bound to miss someone who lived in the house with you for years and shared your work.”

  “She did everything in the house,” Jess fairly spat out. “I worked on the land with my father.”

  So, that was it! Sara thought. Resentment because she was now bound indoors when her heart and her whole talent lay elsewhere.

  “Did your sister go away to be married?” she asked casually, in spite of a pointed reluctance on the girl’s part to go on discussing the past.

  “Maybe she got married. We don’t know.”

  The voice, coming out of the shadows, sounded hollow, disembodied, somehow, and Sara realized that she would only be making herself more unpopular by pressing for an answer to her questions. “What is your other name, Jess?” she asked.

  “Marrick.”

  “It’s a nice name. Is it a common one round these parts?”

  “No.”

  Sara sighed. That was evidently as far as she was going to get. Jess Marrick was not going to be drawn about the past, and something perverse in Sara wondered why. Curiosity about these people, living their dull lives away up here on the moors, was the last thing that should have stirred her, yet she did feel curious.

  When the farmer came back he brought the news that the rain had slackened a little and the egg collector’s van was on its way up the hill.

  “You can’t go back to Alnmouth in this wet clout,” he said, lifting the sodden mackintosh. “Jess’ll lend you one o’ hers. You can send it back with the van since we know where you’re staying.”

  “That’s extremely kind of you,” Sara acknowledged. “And most trusting. I’ll see that Jess gets her coat back as soon as possible.”

  “Get the coat, lass,” the farmer urged, seeing his daughter’s reluctance to do his bidding. “And see to the eggs. How many have we this week?”

  “Thirty dozen.” The girl stood staring back at him in the middle of the floor. “What coat will I fetch?” she asked.

  “You’ve got an old coat, surely!” her father exclaimed almost roughly. “Go get it, and don’t let us have so much talk about it!”

  Sara almost laughed outright at the irony of that last remark, but she felt that laughter was a thing that had died suddenly in his house and that her own mirth would be out of place. She waited for the van to draw up at the back door and heard it with a sense of relief.

  After several minutes, in which she made the acquaintance of the egg collector and was assured of the necessary lift back to the main highway, Jess Marrick reappeared with a fawn raincoat which had seen better days but was probably still useful and waterproof, and Sara accepted it gratefully.

  “It’s too short,” Jess assured her with gloomy satisfaction. “You’re far taller than I am.”

  “All the same,” Sara told her in her best hospital manner, “I shall be grateful for it, Jess. Thank you very much.”

  She slipped the coat over her suit and thanked the farmer in his turn as they went out to the van.

  “You’re welcome,” he told her without much enthusiasm, and the van slid away down the incline and out through the white-painted yard gate.

  “I don’t think I should like to live in a lonely place like that permanently,” Sara remarked to the driver. “It seems to have stamped its remoteness on the Marricks and no mistake!”

  “Oh, the Marricks are all right,” he replied. “The girl acts a bit oddly at times, but it’s best to take no notice of that. Moody, she is, but kind enough in her way, like old Abraham himself.”

  “Abraham Marrick!” Sara mused, turning the name over in her mind. “What a grand sound that has!” She glanced back at the gaunt old house before it was lost to view over a dip in the hilly road. “Do you come here often?”

  “Once a fortnight. It’s enough for me! I take spells with another chap.”

  He was talkative, and Sara learned much that she did not want to know about egg collecting for the Ministry before she was set down at a convenient bus stop on the main road.

  The sky had cleared and the rain had almost ceased, falling now in a thin drizzle, which was not unpleasant, and she decided to wait in the shelter of some nearby trees until the bus arrived.

  “By the way,” she asked idly before she dismissed her valuable companion, “what is the name of the Marricks’ farm? I may decide just to post the coat back to Miss Marrick.”

  “Alnborough,” he told her, as he let in his clutch. “Just Alnborough. That’ll find them all right.”

  It left Sara with a feeling of unreality, of. the impossible happening, of success, perhaps, after long failure.

  “Alnborough,” she repeated to herself. “Just Alnborough!” She thrust her hands deep into the pockets of the borrowed raincoat and her fingers closed over a scrap of linen left there, no doubt, by its owner. Idly, not even thinking of what she was doing, she pulled out the handkerchief and examined it, and in an instant her preoccupation with the house she had just left was transferred to this very ordinary, everyday object in her hand.

  Smoothing it out with fingers that shook a little, she found it had to credit the evidence of her own eyes, for across one corner, embroidered in exactly the same way as on the handkerchief which had given Anna her name, was the one word “Jess.”

  In that instant the temptation in her was to run back to the farm at Alnborough, so sure was she that this was journey’s end as far as her search went, but the bus that would take her back to Alnmouth was already rounding the bend in the road, and she was astute enough to remember that a problem was best considered with a calm mind and apart from excitement.

  Even when the bus had drawn level, however, there was still a certain amount of hesitation in her mind, but the fact that there would not be another bus for two hours and that she had no excuse for returning to the farm so quickly, made her board it when it finally stopped.

  Her heart was beating rapidly and her eyes gleamed with a strange satisfaction as she was carried rapidly towards the town, for she was sure now that she had stumbled upon at least part of Anna’s secret. There was, in fact, no doubt in Sara’s mind that Anna and the daughter whom Abraham Marrick—that grand old man, as Sara now described him to herself—had disowned were one and the same person, and in the shortest possible time she meant to learn the whole truth.

  Jess Marrick, in spite of her moods and her scowls, would, she considered, be easier to intimidate than the old man himself, although she was quite willing to admit that even Jess might prove difficult when it came to discussing the past.

  “But how can I fail?” she murmured. “How can I?”

  All that evening she went about the hotel humming to herself, and she even put a phone call through to Ruth, leaving a message for Noel to say that she thought she would have news for him soon.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NOEL RECEIVED SARA’S message three days later when he returned from Bristol, with mixed feelings, having heard there that his appointment to a large new hospital on the outskirts of the city was more or less a certainty.

  As Sara had observed, it was a decided feather in his cap, a stride rather than a mere step forward in his career, but the parting with all that Glynmareth had come to mean to him was doubly hard now when he considered the problem of Anna’s identity.

  There was, on the other hand, the alternative of refusing the Bristol appointment, but deep in his heart he knew that he had very little choice. Whether he went to Bristol or not, Anna would one day recover her memory and from that day onward she would be lost to him. A clean break and the almost certain assuran
ce of forgetfulness lay ahead for her, while for him only the tortures of the damned seemed to present themselves. He could never hope for forgetfulness, nor could he justifiably convince himself that there might be any other way out of this hopeless situation.

  He was determined, however, that Anna would not be handed over to police care while he had the slightest say in the matter, and from that point he evolved a plan which he hoped to persuade Ruth to carry out.

  Like every other city, Bristol must have its housing shortages, and he knew that he could obtain bachelor quarters in the hospital annex until he had found suitable accommodation elsewhere. This might take time, and the Glynmareth authorities would want the villa for their new superintendent as soon as possible, so that there was very little hope of Ruth’s remaining at the villa for any length of time after his departure.

  A week or two, however, might serve to solve Anna’s problem, and to leave her with Ruth and in Dennis Tranby’s care would be the next best thing to taking her with him. There would be week-ends when he would be free and could travel back to Glynmareth to confer with Dennis, a prospect as bitter-sweet as any he had ever known, yet one he would be called upon to accept as the only small measure of compensation he could permit himself.

  With these problems ever-present in his mind, he did not even think of Sara until he received her message, and not even then could he have imagined her activities in Northumberland after he had left.

  Losing no time, Sara returned to Alnborough the morning after she had found the handkerchief in the pocket of Jess Marrick’s raincoat, ostensibly to return the coat but in reality to sound Jess about her sister. Sara thought of it more as prising out a secret, and a latent streak of cruelty in her nature afforded her a certain vindictive satisfaction at the thought of imposing her admittedly strong will upon the other girl. Jess was not really formidable, she reasoned, and the moroseness must be the result of some recent bitter experience. The scowling unfriendliness could quite easily be the defence of a sensitive nature erected against further hurt.

  When she reached the farm it was deserted, but she caught a glimpse of a bright headscarf and a swinging skirt far up on the hillside, and knew that Jess Marrick had gone up there with the dogs.

  Slowly she walked to the gate, hoping, now that she would not meet the farmer on her way, but she passed unmolested on to the rough moorland and stood waiting for Jess in the shelter of a disused hut half-way up the hill.

  The girl started m surprise at sight of her, calling off the dogs who stood growling in her path.

  “I came to return your coat, Jess,” Sara said. “And this.”

  Coolly she held out the square of white linen embroidered with the other girl’s name, and just as coolly she stood waiting for Jess Marrick’s reaction.

  She was not to be disappointed. Indeed, it was far more primitive than she had expected.

  “She did that!” Jess cried, snatching the handkerchief out of her hand as if she would tear it to shreds and stamp it underfoot. “I should never have kept it! I should have destroyed it long ago!”

  “Come now, Jess,” Sara coaxed in her most engaging manner, “surely things were not as bad as all that between you and your sister? D’you know,” she added confidentially, “I always think one feels a lot better for having discussed this sort of thing, if not with an intimate friend, at least with someone who might understand.” She paused for a moment before continuing directly: “Tell me about her, Jess. I’m quite sure it will help.”

  “Nothing will help anything—not now,” Jess Marrick maintained, determined to keep her tight-lipped silence even in the face of such protestations of sympathy and understanding “She’s gone, and we’re well rid of her. That’s what everybody says.”

  “Everybody, Jess?”

  “All those who know.”

  “Your friends?”

  Jess glared at her.

  “I have no friends. She was the only one.”

  “But surely there’s someone special, some boy friend, perhaps?”

  “There’s no one,” Jess repeated with absolute finality.

  “Was there someone—once?”

  The painful color which flooded into the dark face was answer enough for Sara, and she bent closer to the other girl to suggest: “And your sister married him. Was that it, Jess?”

  The girl’s look became fierce to the point of hatred, and it was hatred against her present inquisitor as much as against her absent sister. It was a wild, ungovernable fury against the whole world because she had been treated badly by someone she had loved and respected. Her anger had the bleak quality of despair about it, although rancour had also gone deep.

  She was reluctant to confide in anyone, however, least of all Sara, whom she could not like.

  “I don’t want your sympathy,” she said with a curious dignity that shut the other girl out, and Sara’s anger immediately sought another weapon.

  “Your sister’s name was Anna,” she suggested tensely. “Did you believe her dead?”

  “No.”

  Sara noticed that the dark eyes had registered pain at her use of the familiar name and her heart lifted with satisfaction. At least, she was on the right track!

  No amount of further questioning, however, would induce Jess Marrick to discuss her sister or the past, and she even walked a little way ahead of Sara until they joined old Abraham at the front gate.

  He was leaning against the wall, talking to a younger man in worn riding-breeches and leggings which were stained with the mark of moss and bog water, and the two seemed on the most friendly terms. Neighbors, no doubt, Sara concluded, noticing the younger man’s work-roughened hands and weather-beaten complexion, which stamped him as a typical product of those wild northern fells. He had a warm, friendly smile that embraced everything about him and included Sara as she drew level with Jess, but it was the younger girl at whom he looked longest, and he greeted her with a shy awkwardness which suggested attraction.

  “Hullo, Jess,” he said. “I came over to see if you would be going into Alnmouth to do the marketing.”

  “Not me!” Jess flushed and tossed her head. “Happen I want to go to Alnmouth I can go with the bus from the crossroads.”

  The rebuff was another form of defence, Sara thought, feeling sorry for the young farmer who recoiled visibly before it.

  “This is Bill Cranston, a neighbor o’ ours,” Abraham Marrick explained, obviously angry at his daughter’s treatment of the young man. “This young lady will be going back to Alnmouth, Bill,” he added, as if one passenger would be compensation for the loss of another. “I warren she’ll be more grateful to ye for a lift than yon ill-mannered daughter o’ mine!”

  “I would,” Sara assured him engagingly. “I seem to upset Jess, Mr. Marrick,” she added, turning to the farmer, “but I should like to come and see you again, if I may?”

  “Come whenever it suits ye,” the farmer responded. “So long as yer don’t expect to be fussed over. We never keep company these days.”

  He said so with suggestion of regret in his voice, although the frown that accompanied his words was still forbidding, but Sara had made up her mind to return again and yet again until she had sifted this mystery to its dregs.

  By accepting the lift back to Alnmouth she hoped to hear something of the Marrick’s past from Bill Cranston, who was so evidently in love with the morose Jess, and she decided that the best way to obtain what she wanted was to pretend to misunderstand the younger girl.

  “Is Jess Marrick ever pleasant?” she asked as they drove off down the hill. “She looks as if she might even bite the hand that fed her!”

  “If that’s meant to be a smart crack at Jess’ expense,” her companion scowled, “I don’t think it very funny. She’s got plenty of reason to be fed up with life.”

  “Because she is forced to work indoors, or because her sister ran off and married the man she wanted?” Sara demanded bluntly.

  His work-roughened hands gripped the stee
ring-wheel a shade more closely and the speedometer climbed from thirty to forty and up to fifty miles an hour before he answered through set teeth: “Nobody could be expected to understand Jess unless they knew,” he said. “She’s had a rough deal, and she’ll be slow to get over it, I warren.”

  “Unrequited love,” Sara mused. “So many of us have felt its barbed shaft. Perhaps I could tell you more about that than you think, Bill.”

  “Jess’ love wasn’t unrequited, not in the first place,” Bill Cranston said savagely. “She was engaged to a fellow who went to sea. He’d got his mate’s ticket and he was doing well. They were going to be married after his next trip but one. The date was fixed. We all knew about it—”

  “Yes,” Sara prompted, “go on.”

  He shifted his position uneasily, taking his foot off the accelerator as they approached the main road.

  “I don’t know why I should be telling you all this,” he said half-resentfully, “but I cannot abide Jess being misunderstood. We were all brought up together,” he went on disjointedly, “Anna and Jessica Marrick and me, and maybe I thought I had some sort of chance with Jess before Ned Armstrong came on the scene, but I might have known that a farming bloke like me would never have a look in with a uniform in the offing. Besides,” he added grimly, “Armstrong had a way with him. Maybe it was a way with women,” he added, speaking bitterly for the first time. “Anyway, there was no one for Jess but him right from the first. When he was at sea she wrote to him every day, and when he had leave he was here at Alnborough and Jess brought him to all the local functions to show him off and let us see how happy they were.”

  His jealousy was thick in his pleasant voice, but he was in no way ashamed of it. Bill Cranston was far too natural for that, too much a son of the soil to dissemble about passions and beliefs.