Still far too overcome to comment I got out of the car and went up the short brick path to the front door. It opened easily on freshly-oiled hinges and inside the big living-room a bright fire burned and each piece of furniture gleamed in the reflection of the flames. There was a delicious air of cosiness about the room, the judicious mixture of oak, brass and copper combining with new wine-red curtains and a profusion of rugs to produce an atmosphere of repose and warmth and permanence. In the kitchen beyond somebody had been hard at work for hours, scouring and red-bricking the floor.
I went back into the big room and across the little passage to the main bedroom. In here a great number of changes had taken place. My old iron bedstead had gone and in its place stood an eighteenth century four-poster lacking its canopy. I recognised it as the bed that had once stood in Diana’s suite in the west wing of Heronslea, at the time of her coming-of-age. The low-ceilinged bedroom had always been rather dark and airless, and I had always been intending to enlarge the window looking over the Teasel Valley. Now somebody else had carried out the improvement and the window had not only been widened but fitted with diamond lattice panes. The stonework at the edges of the frame was old but the mortar was barely dry. There was a lovely Chinese carpet on the floor and two pictures, a small Fragonard, that I also recognised as former Heronslea property, and a larger picture of an autumn hunting scene that I did not recognise but seemed to me an impressive piece of work of the Stubbs school. There was a Sheraton side table set at an angle in the window, with an elegant little dressing-table mirror on it and a long row of pots, bottles and Coalport trays. In the furthest corner beyond the bed was a lovely walnut jardinière holding a sheaf of crimson and lemon-coloured gladioli. I stood at the end of the bed and took in every detail of taste and care that had gone into the making of the room.
Diana’s step on the uneven bricks of the passages roused me. She had followed me into the house and taken off her coat and hat. She had carried in our luggage and put it on a heavy oak chest just inside the door and she was standing watching me with an intentness that suggested anxiety.
“Well, Jan?” she said, so softly that I sensed rather than heard her question.
I stepped out of the bedroom and took her in my arms, holding her very close. We stood thus for a moment and then I shut the door and led her into the living-room. We sat down on the couch under the window, where Drip had once sat sewing through the long winter evenings when she was coaxing me out of my sulk.
“You haven’t said anything, Jan. You like it, don’t you? It’s how you wanted it and where you wanted it?”
“It’s quite wonderful, Di,” I told her, “not simply the place itself but the idea. It’s the most wonderful thing anybody ever did for me, or thought of doing for me!”
She looked so relieved that I laughed. “Did it ever occur to you that I wouldn’t appreciate it?”
“It’s rather a long story, Jan,” she said, breathlessly. “Are you sure you want to hear it now? Maybe we ought to let Drip know we’ve arrived and we can’t phone, I didn’t put a phone in.”
“Drip can wait,” I said, “she obviously expected you to bring me here, or she wouldn’t have lit the fire. We’ll stay here now. You won’t get me to budge!”
“Come now, Mr. Leigh, how can we do that before we’re churched? You haven’t even carried me over the threshold!”
“I can do that right now!” I said and gathered her up, kissing her hair and eyes and mouth and then planting her down on the low settle where she clung to me, laughing like a child whose mischief has delighted an audience of adults.
“Oh, it’s all worked out so differently from how I planned,” she said breathlessly. “I meant us to come here the day we were married but the moment I crossed the border of Sennacharib with you, Jan, it all washed over me like a wave and I couldn’t wait, not another minute! The first evening I returned here I was disappointed in a way. It was wonderful to be back, of course, but it wasn’t the same, with you lying in hospital and me not knowing how soon you’d be out. I got so restless that I had to do something, so in the end I took Drip and Yvonne into my confidence and soon everybody knew and everybody wanted to lend a hand! We only just finished in time. I was terrified you’d leave that ward and pop up when we were halfway through!”
“What gave you the idea, Di? What began it?”
“Oh, it goes back years,” she said, “back to the day you bought this place from your Uncle Mark, and got it ready for me while I was in London, remember? I was an absolute bitch on that occasion, so much so that you took a stick to me when I poured cold water on your idea of love-in-a-cottage, remember?”
I remembered. It seemed centuries ago.
“You deserved it,” I reminded her, “but you made up for it immediately afterwards!”
“It was a lesson well learned,” she mused, “though it did take rather a long time to sink in! I thought about the way I behaved a great deal afterwards and I could never really forgive myself for being so blind and brutal! Even if I make allowances for being immature, it doesn’t absolve me altogether, I might at least have pretended to be impressed and then cooled off gradually!”
“Never mind all that,” I urged, “tell me how you went about this transformation. Was everyone in the secret but me?”
“Almost everyone. Drip and Yvonne were the principals but your Aunt Thirza was very useful and so were the girls from the village. You really are accepted as the Squire of Heronslea now you know. I don’t quite know how it happened, but it has! You see …” she wriggled herself into a more comfortable position, tucking her legs beneath her, tilting her head so that some of her heaviest curls tumbled over the headrest of the couch, “I remembered something that you once said to me when I tried to bulldoze you into taking over the tarted-up Foxhayes Farm, and becoming one of Daddy’s tenants! I remember you saying ‘I don’t want anything from Heronslea but you!’ and it seemed to me that now you finally had me then it was up to me to show you I appreciated the fact! Do you follow?”
“Not altogether,” I admitted, “but go on.”
“Well, everything here, the land, buildings, furnishings—everything is yours! All it needed was a good springclean and one or two little improvements, all of which you paid for without even knowing it!”
“Would you mind telling me how?”
She laughed again. “You’ve been giving Drip an allowance and she’s been hoarding it. She paid for the repairs and the cleaning up, and we got in local labour so it didn’t stand you in at very much. About a hundred and fifty pounds all told.”
“Come now, Di,” I protested, “I’m not that stupid! I’ve been in the antique business and that four-poster, or just one of those pictures in the bedroom, cost a damned sight more than a hundred and fifty!”
“Oh, the bedroom!” she said, “that’s different! That’s my contribution! Hang it all, Jan, you don’t begrudge me the right to give you a wedding present of some sort, do you? Besides, I always liked that bed, it was always a very special bed! Do I have to remind you why?”
“No,” I said, chuckling, “but what about the rest of the bedroom furniture? The Fragonard that used to hang in Heronslea hall, the side table, the carpet and all the other things? And how the devil did you come by the bed and the picture anyway? They were sold when your father went bust. I know that because your mother had to sell everything to pay creditors.”
“That’s quite true,” she said, “but I made a few enquiries from the Whinmouth auctioneer who put them under the hammer and I was able to trace the bed and the Fragonard. I would have traced several other pieces if only they’d kept you in hospital another few days!”
I got up and wandered round the cottage, sniffing the smell that is peculiar to all country cottages, a pleasant combination of yellow soap, heath, peat and old timber. I felt swept along on a tide of exhilaration but beneath this was a current of security that washed away every trace of bitterness and uncertainty. Diana had done this! Without
prompting! Without long-term planning! She had looked into me and diagnosed my hurts, not only those for which she had been responsible but all the self-inflicted wounds as well. It was a remarkable accomplishment and I loved her for it.
“We’ll make up for everything, Di,” I promised her, “and we’ll do it here and now! We’ll obliterate every damned thing that tried to destroy us, money, pride, Rance, Yves, the war, the lot!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sweeping as all that,” she said, smiling, “nostalgia is all right in moderation. This for instance!” and she opened her handbag and took out a small package tied with tinsel string, the kind they use for Christmas presents. “Open it!” she said, smiling and watching me fumble with the fastening.
I peeled off the paper and opened the carton. Inside was a musical box about the size of a large cigarette pack and I recognised it at once. It was Drip’s musical box, the pride of her collection, the one that played “Allan Water” and had been set going in Heronslea kitchen the evening we met.
“Where the blazes did you get it?” I asked, amazed and more moved than I had been by the cottage transformation.
“I begged it from her,” she said, “it seemed important somehow. Play it! Just once! Then we shall have to go on to Heronslea and let them know we’re here.”
I pressed the spring and started the music. The clear, tinkling notes had the sweetness of a remembered perfume. We sat quite still listening and it seemed to me that everything in Sennacharib was listening too. It was one of those intervals that etch themselves into the memory so indelibly that every single detail of scene and sound and smell remain in the mind for ever. I marked the shaft of afternoon sunlight striking a wisp of chestnut hair under Diana’s ear, and heard the solemn, measured tick of the grandfather clock in the corner but it was the scents of the old room that made the deepest impression, burning oak, wax polish, the whiff of the open sea through the window, and Diana’s nearness. The scent of her hair was the essence of all I had ever sought in a woman and Sennacharib.
“Oh God, Di,” I told her, “I’ve never been as happy as I am now!” and I fell on my knees beside her and buried my face in her lap.
“It was rather like following a trail, Jan,” she said, quietly, “you know, one that wandered through all sorts of country, parched and pleasant, up hill and down, but led somewhere worth the effort! It wouldn’t have been the same if it had gone smoothly from the beginning. Sooner or later, Jan, the magic would have gone from it but now it never will, I promise you, never, you understand?”
The musical box played itself out and over Heronslea larch woods the shadows lengthened. Gulls sailed in from the bay, wailing news of rough weather and their cries echoed across the valley.
I took her by the hand and we went out to the car. Neither of us spoke again until we had coasted down into Shepherdshey village and turned in at the beech avenue that led up to the big, white house.
Chapter Nine
HUSTLE NOTWITHSTANDING we were unable to marry that week or the next. There were various formalities concerning Yves’ death and estate and arrangements involving the re-organisation of Heronslea. Form-filling and business chores never bothered Diana. She sailed through them like a cheerful apprentice putting up the shutters before going on holiday. She seemed to have made herself very popular with the children and was always in demand, giving riding and swimming lessons, telling improbable stories and organising games. I marvelled at her vitality and the ease with which she had sloughed off the experiences she had undergone in France. Sennacharib had not only rejuvenated her physically, it had restored to her all her zest for living and originality so that now the entire establishment seemed to revolve around her and take on some of her glitter.
The only person whom she did not seem able to dominate was Yvonne. Yvonne still preferred my company but perhaps this was because Diana had usurped her as Queen of Heronslea. Yvonne did not resent this but slipped out of the limelight almost gratefully and spent a good deal of her time with me, sometimes watching her mother’s high jinks with a curiosity that was grave but amusing.
“I know what she’s like,” she said to me suddenly, when we were standing by the paddock rails witnessing Diana’s spectacular clearance of some bush jumps she had built for the children. “She’s like the gale, you know, Jan, the one that comes in from over the river, bending all the trees and making a fearful to-do and then, when you’re least expecting it, goes whooping over Teasel Wood and leaves you out of breath!”
It was a very accurate description of Diana in her present mood and when the gale had blown itself out I remembered and thought about Yvonne’s remark.
They were rewarding days. The sun seemed to shine from first light until early evening when Diana and I crossed the small paddock and went up through the larch wood to Big Oak, Foxhayes or Tower Wood. Nothing had changed up here, not a bush, not a fold in the ground. The oak where the buzzards lived had seen a dozen wars come and go and the steep lanes intersecting the coverts and heathland were gay with campion, stitchwort, viper’s bug-loss and the periwinkles that matched Diana’s eyes. Together we made many sentimental journeys. Sometimes we turned our backs on the open country and went to swim in Nun’s Cove and one hot afternoon we rowed over to Nun’s Island and found Crusoe Jack’s ruined cabin, where we had lived throughout our three-day elopement. We even found the cross that Diana had made to mark the grave of the two unknown seamen, lost in the wreck that gave the island its name and we laughed at our earnestness in having conducted the burial service half-a-century after the bones had been laid there.
It was during our visit to the island that I thought I had hit upon the hidden cause for the curious physical shyness that had entered into our relationship. During the brief interval at the villa, whilst we were awaiting Rance, we had sought and found relief in one another from the desperate tension of the vigil, but now, when there was no tension and we had all the privacy lovers could desire, we kissed like a pair of shy sixteen-year-olds playing hide-and-seek with each other in the maze of inexperience. I attributed this to the magic of Sennacharib and to the sheer wonder of being alive to receive its benediction. When we had been alone on the island as adolescents we had not made love and the shameful examination to which Diana had been subjected on her return home had proved unnecessary, a fact which astonished her parents. Now, after all these years, the same invisible chaperon accompanied us through the glades and across the beaches we knew so well and there was no need to possess her for now she was already possessed in the deepest and most satisfactory sense. I could look at her for minutes at a stretch, marvelling at the firm maturity of her breasts and the long sweep of her thighs, loving the tumult of her hair and the full curves of her mouth and yet do so without desire, without needing to touch or undress her, and enjoy her nearness and warmth and enthusiasm for love. That afternoon, as we sat watching the sun play on the tide-race over towards Whinmouth, I mentioned this lull and she laughed and shook her head.
“Oh no, Jan, it isn’t that, not really, and it isn’t a virginal phoenix arising from the ashes of our spiritual marriage in this setting. It’s something more mature I imagine, or perhaps more primitive! You know the old superstition about the groom seeing the bride the morning of the wedding? Well, we’re getting a bigger kick out of the hopeful journey than we shall from the arrival and I say ‘we’ because I understand exactly what you mean. I’ve never felt like this in my whole life, not about any man and not about you, never so utterly and comfortably sure! To make love now might invite a depressive reaction!”
“How long is this reticence likely to last?” I said, and I must have sounded slightly anxious, for she shouted with laughter. “Oh, until about ten minutes after we’ve left the Register Office in Whinford, I should say!” and she kissed me so boisterously that the invisible chaperon ran halfway down the beach and then stopped and came back, but slowly and hesitantly.
It was when we were on our way back to the mainland that I suggested we s
hould call on her mother and bury the pre-war hatchet by inviting her to be one of our witnesses. I did not look for enthusiasm on Diana’s part. She and Mrs. Gayelorde-Sutton had detested one another since Diana was a child but their antipathy had very little to do with me, it was there long before I appeared on the scene. To my surprise, however, she raised no objection.
“Why not ask Old Gramp, the pirate, to stand in for me?” she said. “It might be fun. Mummy would have to acknowledge him publicly!”
“Let’s not go hunting trouble,” I told her, “It usually finds us easily enough. No, I’m serious, Di. It’s damned childish to maintain the feud and I’ve got nothing against your mother, in spite of the fact that she was a bitch to me in the past. As a matter of fact I rather admire her for starting up again the way she did. She showed more spunk than any of us when it came to the touch!”
“Okay!” Diana agreed, “we’ll pay a social call on the exiled Squireen of Heronslea and you needn’t worry, Jan, I’ll behave! As a matter of fact I’m curious to discover whether she still puts all her vowels on the rack! She’s running a dress shop, you say?”
“It’s rather more than a dress shop. It’s called ‘Marcelle’ and I’ve never been there but I’ve heard it’s sensational. Bond Street in a Devon market town! We’ll go over tomorrow morning, I’ll ring her tonight.”
“No, don’t!” said Diana, her voice bubbling with laughter, “it’ll be so much more fun to catch her on the hop. She must have heard we’re back in the district but the last thing she’ll expect is a social call from me. I’m glad you suggested it, Jan, I’m looking forward to this!”
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