Hilltop Tryst

by Betty Neels

  It was a pleasantly warm afternoon; they lay on the well-cushioned loungers on the lawn behind the house, and presently Beatrice went to sleep, to wake to the gentle rattle of teacups. ‘Too nice to go indoors just yet,’ said Oliver. ‘Be mother, will you? And tell me what plans you have for the future.’

  She poured from a silver pot into wafer-thin and exquisite china cups. ‘I haven’t any,’ she said baldly. ‘Do you have sugar?’

  ‘What—have you forgotten that already? Two lumps. Has Colin ceased to worry you?’

  ‘Yes. I haven’t thought about him for quite a while. I can’t think how I ever imagined that I was in love with him.’

  ‘One never can. But experience is valuable—it enables you to know the real thing when it comes along.’

  She passed the sandwiches and didn’t look at him. It was only too true in her case, and she would rather die than tell anyone, ever. She said in a wooden voice, ‘I’m quite sure you’re right.’

  The long silence was broken by Mabel, wanting cake, and Oliver began a gentle chat about nothing much so that Beatrice was soothed into content. It wouldn’t last, she knew that; sooner or later she would remember that he was going to get married to someone else, and even if he remained her friend, indeed a friend of the family, it wouldn’t be the same. She bit into Mrs Jennings’ walnut cake and hoped with all her heart that he would be happy.

  They wandered round the garden presently, and then strolled along to see the horses and Kate the donkey. Since it was a fine evening, they took Mabel for a walk through the open country behind the house.

  Beatrice was happy; she knew it wouldn’t last, but just for the moment life was everything she could ask of it. She didn’t have much to say, but there didn’t seem to be the need to talk. They turned for home presently, and Mrs Jennings led her away to tidy herself before dinner.

  Oliver was in his drawing-room when she joined him, and they sat by the open window, watching Mabel gallop around the lawn while they had their drinks. Presently they dined. Mrs Jennings had excelled herself: a terrine of leeks and prawns in a delicate sauce, red mullet with thyme, and raspberries and cream. Beatrice did justice to the lot.

  They sat over their coffee, but at length she said, ‘I think I should go home now.’

  Yet she felt an instant sadness at his prompt, ‘Of course, you must be tired.’

  ‘Are you going back to London on Monday?’ she asked as they drove back.

  ‘Yes, I shan’t be down again for some time. There’s a good deal of work for me and I have some business of my own to settle. There are certain arrangements to make before one marries.’

  She was glad that she didn’t need to answer that, for they had arrived at her home, and although he went in with her it was to spend a short time with her father before bidding them all goodnight in his usual pleasant manner and driving away. She didn’t think that she would see him again, not as a friend, anyway. Next time he would be pleasantly impersonal, intent on checking up on her father, probably relieved that she and her tiresome problems were no longer in need of any help.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT WAS only after he had been gone for an hour or more that Beatrice remembered that nothing had been said about their pseudo engagement. Since it had been announced in the paper, it would have to be revoked in the same manner. On the other hand, if Colin saw it, he might try and see her again. Perhaps Oliver intended to do nothing about it; it would be best to leave it to him.

  She was grateful for the suggestion her mother made that she should go to bed rather early. ‘A lot has happened today,’ observed her parent, ‘and you must be very tired. Your father has to go over to Telfont Evias in the morning. Perhaps you would drive him, dear? That Jersey herd there, they all have to have something done to them.’

  Mrs Browning was delightfully vague about it, although her daughters suspected that she knew a great deal more about a vet’s work than she appeared to.

  ‘Yes, of course I’ll go. If Father’s going to be there a long time, shall I do any shopping for you in Tisbury?’

  ‘Yes, dear. Mrs Perry wants several things, you could get them at the ironmonger’s.’ She glanced at her daughter’s pale, sad face. ‘Off to bed with you, love. Father will have to leave about eight o’clock if he’s to be done by lunchtime. What a blessing Mr Sharpe is so very reliable.’ She waited until Beatrice was going upstairs. ‘You don’t miss Colin, dear?’

  ‘No, Mother, he doesn’t mean anything any more.’

  So it wasn’t he who had put that unhappy look on Beatrice’s face, reflected her mother, but Oliver. She frowned, for she had felt sure that he was more than interested in her. Of course, there was this girl he was going to marry. ‘I’d like to see that girl with my own eyes,’ muttered Mrs Browning. ‘She’s too good to be true, for one thing.’

  The week went by, and a second followed it; Beatrice, once more back in her familiar routine, did her best not to think of Oliver and failed lamentably. She scanned the paper each morning, searching for his name among the marriage announcements, and she wrote a careful letter to Ethel, in which she took great pains not to mention the doctor, merely reiterating her enjoyment of their trip and hoping that Ethel had had a good holiday. She had a letter back in which, among other bits of news, Ethel mentioned that Oliver was working much too hard. She hadn’t asked him why, it wasn’t her place to do so, but she suspected the reason. This was followed by several exclamation marks which, to Beatrice’s unsettled mind, implied that Ethel knew a good deal more than she intended to write.

  She was in her room, making her bed, when she looked out of the window and saw the Rolls halting smoothly in front of the house. There was a back staircase, and without stopping to think very clearly Beatrice darted from her room, sneaked down to the back door and slid away into the line of trees and shrubs beyond the field, where the convalescent horses and cows were kept. Only when she paused for breath did she wonder why she had done it. The thought uppermost in her mind was that she couldn’t bear to see him again, even though she longed to do so. She fetched up against an uprooted tree and sat down on its trunk. She wasn’t far away from the house; she would hear when he drove away. Presently she heard her mother’s voice calling her, and then Ella, free from school for the day, shouting for her. She took no notice, they would think that she had gone for a walk or biked down to the village, and in a little while Oliver would go away.

  It was almost half an hour before she heard the gentle purr of the Rolls as he left. She sat for another five minutes, just to be on the safe side, and then started back. She went a little cautiously, intent on circumventing the house and appearing from the tumbledown shed at the back of the yard where her bike was kept. She reached the corner of the clinic and poked her head cautiously round the corner.

  Her view was blotted out by the vast expanse of the doctor’s waistcoat within inches of her nose.

  ‘Now, I wonder why you ran away?’ he asked, pleasantly casual. ‘It struck me that you were probably hiding in that convenient little patch of trees. Why?’

  She stared up at him. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said, ‘I don’t know why, really I don’t.’ And then, being a truthful girl by nature, ‘Well, I do know, but I can’t tell you.’

  He smiled down at her. ‘I hope that when you feel you can tell me, you will.’

  ‘Never,’ said Beatrice, and, at that moment at least, meant it. ‘I should get back, I’m making beds…’

  But he made no movement at all to stand aside, and short of turning tail and going back the way she had come, there was no way of getting past him. She took refuge in polite conversation. ‘Have you come down for a few days’ rest?’ she asked politely.

  ‘No, I must go straight back. Ethel has a row of patients lined up for me to see this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh—then why…?’ She stopped before she said something silly.

  ‘Did I come?’ he finished for her. ‘To see you, but now I find that this is not the right moment, aft
er all.’

  ‘What about?’

  He laughed down at her. ‘Getting married, Beatrice.’

  The pretty colour in her cheeks paled. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I—I hope that you will ask us all to your wedding.’

  ‘You may depend upon that. Does Colin still write to you?’

  The question took her by surprise. ‘Yes, but I don’t read his letters.’

  ‘He’s still in England?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never looked at the postmark.’

  ‘You really have forgotten him, haven’t you?’

  She said quietly, ‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled up at him, learning his face by heart.

  ‘Heartwhole and fancy free,’ he announced softly. ‘Do you wonder what is around the next corner?’

  She shook her head, held out her hand and said in a pleasant, polite and wooden voice, ‘Goodbye, Oliver. We’ll see each other again, of course, but it won’t be—won’t be the same.’

  He took her hand. ‘No, it won’t.’ He laughed down at her surprised face. ‘Off you go and make your beds.’ He touched her cheek lightly with a finger, and she turned and ran past him, furious with herself for crying. Thank goodness he hadn’t seen that!

  She raced upstairs and went on with the beds, and by the time she had finished she looked almost the same as usual. Only Ella, in the kitchen making the coffee, took a look at her pink eyelids and opened her mouth to speak, and then shut it again at her mother’s frowning look.

  It was three days later, when her mother had gone on her duty visit to Great-Aunt Sybil, Mrs Perry had gone home and Ella was at school, that Beatrice found herself alone in the house. Her father had gone to an outlying farm and Mr Sharpe had gone to the calf sale in Tisbury. It was another summer day, and she had opened all the windows and left the door to the kitchen open while she pottered to and fro, pulling radishes and cutting lettuce ready for supper that evening. Knotty was lying across the step, half asleep, and she had turned the radio on. Presently, she decided she would make a cup of tea and spend an hour in the garden before seeing to the few animals in the clinic.

  She had her back to the door when Knotty suddenly got up in a flurry, barking madly, and when she turned round Colin was standing just inside the kitchen.

  He was smiling, but she didn’t much care for that; she waited silently for him to speak, feeling nothing but indignation at the way he had walked into the house in such a fashion. It made her feel better to see that he was disconcerted by her calm response to his appearance, but he recovered himself quickly.

  ‘Took you by surprise, didn’t I? I told you in my letters that I’d be back—perhaps you didn’t believe me.’

  ‘I don’t read your letters. Will you go away, Colin? I’m busy.’

  He grinned. ‘I know where everyone is,’ he told her, ‘and you’re here on your own for at least another hour. Time enough for us to have a little talk.’

  ‘We have nothing to talk about.’ She was suddenly furious. ‘Get out, Colin. Why do you keep pestering me?’

  ‘Because I have a very shrewd suspicion that you’re not going to marry that doctor of yours. It was a put-up job, wasn’t it? Oh, I know all about it; you went to Europe with him, didn’t you? I suppose you thought I’d be fool enough to go away. I don’t give in so easily, Beatrice, my darling. He’s not going to marry you, is he? For all I know he’s already got a wife, so here you are, jilted. And don’t deny it, there’s not been a word about a wedding for weeks; I’ve had my ear to the ground in the village and I don’t miss much. So now you should be glad that I still want to marry you. Of course, I shall expect a partnership—the practice is big enough to take a third man—a good salary in order to keep my wife in the comfort to which she has been accustomed and a decent house to live in.’

  Beatrice said steadily, ‘I think you’re absurd. Perhaps I was infatuated with you for a few weeks, but now I really have no wish to see you again, so you can take no for a final answer and go away.’ She added in a reproving voice, ‘The weeks you have wasted, Colin!’

  ‘Not wasted, my dear.’ He had come into the kitchen and closed the door on a protesting Knotty. ‘You can’t deny any of the things I’ve said, can you?’ He eyed her thoughtfully. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised to find that you’re in love with this high and mighty doctor.’

  He was astute. She had kept her face calm, but the look in her eyes gave her away, and he gave a triumphant chuckle. ‘I thought so. All the more reason for you to reconsider marrying me. It would be one in the eye for him, wouldn’t it? You must be feeling humiliated.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Of course—he doesn’t know! I shall enjoy telling him.’

  ‘You’re despicable, and he won’t believe you.’

  He had moved nearer and she had moved behind the kitchen table, facing him and taking comfort from its stoutness.

  ‘Don’t you believe it, darling. Can you imagine his tolerant amusement at your naïve idea? Just because he was good enough to help you out of a situation you didn’t like, you have got besotted with him.’

  ‘You are imagining a lot of nonsense,’ Beatrice spoke with her usual calm, although her insides were shaking. She wasn’t surprised when he said, ‘I promise I won’t tell, if you agree to marry me.’

  She glanced at the old-fashioned clock behind him on the wall. In another half-hour or so her father would be back, and her mother too. She badly needed someone on her side, even Knotty, barking his head off again.

  Knotty was barking at Ella, home earlier than usual from school and standing just out of sight, looking into the kitchen. Her first thought was to rush inside and help Beatrice bundle Colin out of the house, but prudence prevailed. Another man should deal with the situation. Mr Sharpe was just outside in the lane, talking to the vicar. She turned and ran round to the front of the house, just as the Rolls slid her handsome nose round the curve of the drive.

  Ella didn’t call out, she was too near the kitchen for that. She flew at the car, and the doctor slid to a halt, stopping with an inch or so to spare. ‘Don’t do that again, Ella, I very nearly died of fright.’

  ‘Sorry, Oliver, do come! Thank heaven you’re here. Colin’s in the kitchen with Beatrice…’

  He was a very big man and heavily built, but he reached the kitchen, opened the door and was inside while Ella was catching her breath. He hadn’t appeared to hurry, yet there he was, leaning calmly against the doorjamb. Beatrice restrained an impulse to hurl herself into his arms, and wondered with a flash of temper at his almost casual attitude. True, he had come into the kitchen very fast. She gave him a rather tremulous smile, and thought thankfully that everything would be all right now.

  Nobody spoke; the doctor gave the impression that he was half asleep anyway, and Colin was marshalling his wits, and Ella, who had slipped into the kitchen, held her tongue, which for her was unusual.

  Presently Colin spoke. ‘I’m staying in the village; it seemed a good chance to come and see Beatrice. I wanted to make quite sure that she was still open to persuasion to marry me. She might just as well—did you know, by the way, that the poor girl is head over heels in love with you?’

  ‘Yes. I knew.’ The doctor took a step, gripped Colin by the arm and marched him outside, closing the door quietly as he went and Ella let out a gasp.

  ‘Oh, do you suppose he’s going to kill him?’

  Beatrice was shaking like a jelly, furiously angry and so humiliated that she would cheerfully have sunk through the floor if that had been possible.

  ‘I hope they kill each other,’ she said with a snap.

  Several minutes elapsed before the doctor returned. ‘Did you knock him out?’ asked Ella eagerly.

  ‘Er—no. But I don’t think he will be coming here again.’ He hadn’t looked at Beatrice. ‘Do you suppose your mother would invite me to tea if you went and asked her? We’ll be along presently.’

  Beatrice made for the door, but she had to go round the table and Ella was ahead of her; besides, Oliver put out a
leisurely arm and caught her hand as she tried to pass him.

  He shut the door into the back hall as Ella went out, and stood leaning against it. ‘Colin won’t bother you again,’ he said gently. ‘I give you my word on that. Forget him, Beatrice.’ He patted her shoulder in an avuncular manner. ‘How very fortunate that Ella came home early from school, but I hope someone will warn her not to run full tilt into cars. I missed her by a couple of inches.’ He gave her a kindly, impersonal smile. ‘Shall we have tea? All this excitement makes one thirsty.’

  She went ahead of him. He wasn’t going to say anything about Colin’s spiteful disclosure, and she was most grateful for that; she got red again just thinking about it. More than ever now she must avoid him. As they went into the drawing-room, her unhappy mind was already exploring the possibility of going to stay with one or other of the more distant family.

  Ella must have said something, but no one mentioned Colin as they had their tea. Oliver carried on an effortless conversation with her mother and father, completely at his ease, gave Ella a few useful hints about the biology paper she was preparing for her class, and without appearing to do so, drew Beatrice into the talk. He stayed some time then finally made his unhurried departure. From Beatrice’s point of view, he couldn’t go fast enough. She never wanted to see him again, although how she would be able to live without doing so was a moot point. She summoned up a stiff smile as he went, but she didn’t go out to the car with the others. Instead she made some excuse about feeding Knotty. When they got back, she was so bracing in her manner that no one uttered a word about the afternoon’s unfortunate event, and when she said in a bright voice that she fancied she would like a visit to an aged aunt of her mother’s who lived with a great many cats in a cottage in Polperro, she met with an enthusiastic response.

  ‘Why not, dear?’ said her mother. ‘There’s that student coming from the veterinary college at Bristol; he can take over from you, and Aunt Polly will love to hear all the news.’