The Holm Oaks

by P. M. Hubbard

  ‘Not necessarily, of course. Only I don’t think in fact Stella believed them to be very different. That may have been wishful thinking on her part.’

  He looked at me, one eyebrow raised and the ghost of a smile on his strong, slightly contemptuous mouth. I could not think why he wasted his time farming and being a County Councillor. Perhaps, as Mr Greenslade had said, he had political ambitions. Perhaps he did not photograph well. ‘However,’ I said, ‘I think you were saying you had come to see Stella when we allowed ourselves to be diverted by formalities. I did not know, until you said so to my wife the other day, that you knew her. I don’t think she has ever spoken of you.’

  ‘No?’ he said. ‘No, perhaps not. We haven’t known each other very long in fact.’

  ‘Only since we came to the Holt House, I imagine? Or had you known her before?’

  ‘No, no. Only since you came here. We met by chance, in fact, on one of her journeys down here, and I’ve seen her several times since.’

  ‘And you want to see her again now?’

  He put his hands in his jacket pockets and spread his feet a little apart. We stood facing each other. He was one of the few people I have known on whom slightly larger-than-life gestures sat naturally and who habitually used them with assurance and success. For my part I stuck my hands in my trouser pockets and waited. It was not me that had to do the explaining. He said, ‘I had hoped I might see her, yes.’

  ‘You know your own business best, Mr Grainger,’ I said, ‘but my sister-in-law’s unmarried, an orphan, well over twenty-one and a successful professional woman. If you want to see her, there is no reason I know of why you shouldn’t come to the door and ask for her. It is no business of mine to ask you your intentions. Not, at any rate, on the score of morals or ordinary prudence. If there’s anything criminal involved, or if my sister-in-law is likely to get hurt, I might have something to say, because I happen to be very fond of her and concerned for her. Otherwise it’s nothing to do with me. And as there’s no one else about, I don’t see why you should lurk on the edge of the trees like a love-sick wood nymph. Apart from anything else, I don’t think you’re well suited to the role.’

  He laughed very pleasantly. ‘I’m glad to hear you say you’re fond of Stella and don’t want her hurt. May I ask you, that being so, not to tell her you’ve seen me and spoken to me? I’m sorry if this seems odd, but you’ll have to take my word for it that it will be far better – for Stella, I mean – if you don’t. Nothing criminal involved, I assure you. As you say, she’s quite capable of looking after herself – in most respects, anyhow. But she will be much happier if she doesn’t know that I was here and that we met like this. Can I count on you?’

  I said, ‘Mr Grainger, you exasperate me much less than might have been expected. All right. I won’t say a word to Stella. I suppose you know what you’re up to. Now I’ll get on, or she may be wondering where I am.’ I recovered the alpenstock, rather unwillingly, from behind me and climbed over the stile with determined dignity. On the other side I stopped and said, ‘I suppose there’s nothing I can do? I mean – don’t know what it is you want, but can I in any way help you to it?’

  He was already a little way down the path, and there he too stopped and turned. He thought about it. This was clearly genuine. He really was considering whether or not he could make use of me. Finally he came down against it. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid not. But thank you very much, all the same. You’ll be leaving here soon, I imagine? If not, I hope we meet some time.’

  He strode off along the path into the darkness. He strode as he did everything else, a little too well to be true, but it was a magnificent exit. My own entrance to the Holt House, trailing the alpenstock, was less impressive. It was observed by Stella, who stood in the lit hall with the front door open. She said, ‘Where have you been, Jake? Not the wood?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I thought it was time I had a look at it.’

  ‘You’re not worried about anything, are you?’

  ‘About what, for instance?’

  ‘Elizabeth’s death.’

  ‘That’s rather a comprehensive question, isn’t it?’ I smiled at her but she was in deadly earnest. ‘I regret the manner of her dying very much.’

  ‘But not her death, Jake surely? You’re not going to tell me you’d have her back if you could? She hasn’t meant anything to you these three years at least. Except a pain in the neck.’

  ‘All right, Stella. She hasn’t. And no, I wouldn’t. At least do me the justice to admit I’ve never said so. I never supposed for a moment that you were under any illusions about the marriage, but at least I’ve never burdened you with intolerable confidences.’

  She said, ‘I don’t think the confidences would have added much to the general intolerability. I suppose you’d say you were being loyal. All it looked like to me was a simple refusal to face facts.’

  ‘It wasn’t the facts I refused to face. It was the consequences that would have followed from facing them. If a situation is genuinely intolerable, action can’t be avoided, obviously. So it’s easier not to admit that it is, even if it involves standing on your head blindfold. Most men – well, quite a lot of men, anyway – spend a remarkable amount of their lives standing on their heads blindfold. The very young won’t do it, and are therefore branded by their elders as intolerant. In fact they are only more honest. But I’m not as young as all that, and I couldn’t help myself.’

  I turned from the hall into the sitting-room on the right. Stella followed me in there and, when I sat down, sat down opposite me. She said, ‘If Elizabeth’s death doesn’t worry you, why go into the wood?’

  I had never had much resistance to Stella’s questioning, and I could not, like Elizabeth, take refuge in a lost temper. I said, ‘I’m not worried by Elizabeth’s death. I’m worried about it - about how it happened.’

  ‘The pigs? That was ghastly, Jake, I know. But it was pure accident. Or do you think that man really put them in the wood deliberately?’

  ‘Of course he put them in deliberately. But not to kill Elizabeth or anyone else. Just to scare us off. He wanted to spoil the wood for us. Otherwise why choose that rather alarming breed? No, I don’t think the pigs were intentionally murderous in themselves. But I think they helped no end.’

  ‘Helped? I don’t know what you mean, Jake. They killed her, didn’t they?’

  I could feel the intensity of the eyes I avoided meeting. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure.’ She moved suddenly, and when I looked up, she was half-way to the door.

  ‘I must get supper,’ she said. ‘Do you mean you think Dennis Wainwright attacked her and the pigs merely broke her up? I think that’s crazy. And in any case—’ She spun round where she stood by the open door, and we looked hard at each other. ‘In any case,’ she said, ‘why worry? It’s done, isn’t it? And you wouldn’t have it undone, you admit that. Why dig about, for God’s sake? I can’t see any sense in it. I don’t see it matters to anybody what Dennis Wainwright did. The great thing is Elizabeth’s dead. Why can’t we get away from here and forget the whole business?’

  She did not slam either door, but she went from the sitting-room to the kitchen with an unnecessary violence of movement, bumping the corner of the hall table as she went. Elizabeth might have slammed the door, but she would have gone with a whisk of skirts and would not have hit the table. I was more than ever glad of Elizabeth’s death, but beginning to be worried about Stella. I could not shut my mind to Stella, as I had shut it to her sister. If she was unhappy, I suffered with her. If she behaved badly, she hurt me, directly and sometimes fiercely. Her incisive mind and direct speech had for so long been my safety valve against mounting frustration and boredom, that I had failed to see how much the mere presence of Elizabeth was, in its turn, an insulation against Stella’s penetrative and disturbing activity. Carol occupied almost the whole of my mind. With Elizabeth safely relegated to its outer edges, it was possible to maintain the curious bala
nce in our relations which I had several times noticed with a certain amount of sardonic amusement. Stella was quite a different matter. I had surprised myself, when I had hardly done more than see Carol, by finding that I was not anxious to have Stella around. Now, with Elizabeth dead and Stella able to achieve an uninterrupted command of my attention, the thing threatened to be very uncomfortable indeed. It struck me as odd that a wife should offer less of a mental obstacle to a love affair than her uncommitted sister. Nevertheless, it was undoubtedly true, and I did not like it.

  Over supper Stella said, ‘I was wondering. Did anyone know you were going to be away that evening?’

  ‘Only Elizabeth. And she didn’t know when I should be back, because I forgot to tell her which train I was coming on. I know, because when I ditched the car and had to walk, I remember being glad I hadn’t given her any particular time to expect me. But Dennis Wainwright saw me go off in the morning and had good reason to think I was going to London. It wouldn’t have been difficult for him to go from there to the fact that I shouldn’t be back until fairly late. I mean – if Elizabeth was killed when I imagine she was, I could hardly have been back from London by then, whatever train I came by. Not unless I had pretty well done my business on the platform at Waterloo. My ditching the car was irrelevant really, except that it meant I didn’t find her until next morning. If I had got in less late and less tired, I might not have assumed so readily that she had gone to bed. But the thing was done by then. Or so I assume. I suppose it’s possible that she might have been injured during the evening and not attacked by the pigs until later that night. But I don’t think so. They were rampaging in that part of the wood when I got back.’

  ‘Where did you ditch the car?’

  ‘Well on the far side of Marlock. Five miles at least, I should think. There was a tree down blocking the road. I tried to back and turn but got in the ditch and couldn’t shift her.’

  I looked at her, wondering. She got up and started to shift the things. I pushed my chair back and said, ‘It didn’t hold you up, anyhow.’

  ‘No. It was clear by the time I came through. They must have cleared it.’

  ‘I wondered whether you had come in by the other road, through Seele.’

  ‘Seele? No. Why should I come by Seele?’

  ‘No reason at all,’ I said. ‘The Marlock road’s more direct. I only thought you might have.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘no. You go on through. I’ll get coffee.’

  I was up early next morning and caught Mike Grainger before he had breakfasted. He was supervising the milking of a beautiful Guernsey herd. He moved among their sleek perfection with a sort of appraising good-fellowship. He had long ago adjudged himself best beast in the show, and wore his blue rosette with the ease of established custom. He said, ‘Hullo, Mr Haddon, you’re up early.’

  I was, in fact, up earlier than usual, but I resented the implication that a townsman like myself might have been expected to be still in bed. I was wide enough awake, at least, to apprehend the wariness under the practised charm. He walked out with me to my car, tiptoeing over the mud of the lane as I had seen surgeons tiptoe over the spotless but asterile corridors outside the operating theatre. ‘What can I do for you?’ he said.

  I said, ‘You know the night of my wife’s death?’

  He stood quite still. ‘I can’t remember, without looking it up, what the date was,’ he said. ‘But I know the night you’re talking about, of course. It was the night we had the storm.’

  I nodded. ‘Did you see my sister-in-law that night?’

  He said, ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’ The playfulness was not wholly assumed. He was mildly rueful at my question, but not seriously disturbed. ‘Why do you ask, Mr Haddon?’

  ‘You mean what business is it of mine?’

  ‘No. Oh no.’ He was suddenly in earnest. Humanity flowed startlingly out of him, and I knew, as I had known the evening before, how easy it would be to like him. ‘No,’ he said again, ‘I didn’t mean that, really. I think you are concerned. At least I think you should be. But I really did wonder what had made you ask about Stella’s movements that night. I imagine it was something she said.’

  I said, ‘She arrived at the Holt House fairly early next morning. I assumed she had travelled from London overnight. I’m not sure, but I think she allowed me to assume this. I’m now inclined to believe that she came in fact from Seele.’

  ‘All right. She did. She came down here the evening before. She dined with me and spent the night here. It was previously arranged. It wasn’t the first time.’

  I nodded. ‘Did my wife know about this?’ I asked.

  ‘About this particular fixture? I don’t know. She knew about us, yes. Stella told me. I don’t know how she found out. But it needn’t have been particularly difficult, if she was sufficiently interested. Stella and I are both, as you said yesterday, free agents. There was nothing particularly clandestine about it. Only—’

  For the second time in my experience of him Mike Grainger was genuinely at a loss. He became immediately and enormously more likeable. ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘Only she didn’t want you to know, Mr Haddon. That above everything. It was very important to her that you shouldn’t.’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘Oh yes. There was no reason why she shouldn’t, after all. As you know, I did my best, not very successfully, to see that you didn’t. Hence the love-sick wood nymph act. I thought that was a little unkind of you, I must say. I was trying to do right by everyone. It never pays, of course. I shouldn’t have attempted it if it hadn’t been something pretty important.’

  ‘It was important?’ I said.

  He looked at me. His face was friendly but quite blank. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘it was very important indeed.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I beat Stella to it by a split second when I got in. ‘I was up early,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t sleep much.’ This was true enough. I had seldom passed a night more miserably.

  She said, ‘Jake, this is nonsense. You’ve never looked anything but awful since you came to this place. For God’s sake make the break now. You could get a flat or something if you want to be on your own. I ought to be in London now anyhow, and I could do whatever you needed until you decide what to do permanently. Can’t you make up your mind to it?’

  ‘Give me twenty-four hours,’ I said. ‘God knows I don’t want to be a burden to you.’

  ‘All right. But I’ll hold you to it. This time tomorrow.’

  I finished completely, but almost without noticing it, the admirable breakfast she provided. I noticed that whatever else I suffered I seldom really lost my appetite. I had lost weight because my agitation and restlessness burnt up fuel at a surprising rate. But I seldom failed, during the whole time I was at the Holt House, to eat fairly regular and solid meals, whatever I lacked in sleep or mental quiet. Perhaps it was the sea air, but I cannot honestly recommend it.

  I wanted to go to the Wainwrights’ end of the wood, but I did not want Stella to know where I was going. It was all a rather dreary business. I minded deceiving Stella much more than I had ever minded deceiving Elizabeth. Also, she was much harder to deceive, I suppose because she, too, felt more strongly than Elizabeth ever had. I pottered out of the gate northwards and went down to the mere.

  The mere had always been Elizabeth’s preserve, ever since the first evening we had got here and she had picked her room to overlook it. I did not like it at all. In this grey autumn weather it was almost actively repellent, flat but always wind-ruffled, fresh water more or less, but scurfed round the edge with the salt that came in with the wind and seeped through under the beach. I picked my way eastwards along its southern side, out of sight of the house under the steep bank. At its eastern end it reached as far as the eastern end of the wood, but I did not go that far. About half-way along I clambered up the bank until I could see both ways along the track. There was no one about. The Holt House had retired behind the corner
of the wood. I climbed out on to the track, crossed it and set about, for the first time, climbing Dennis Wainwright’s fence.

  It was not at all like my dream. So far from being elastic and clinging, it was as rigid as a climbing frame. The only difficulty was the barbs on the top strands, and I was in no particular hurry, once I was reasonably out of sight of either end of the track. I climbed with elaborate care up one side, teetered for a moment while I got my legs over the top, and then climbed down the other. It was not even, from a human viewpoint, a very effective barrier. If ever nycticorax’s haunt was discovered, this would not keep the enthusiasts or predators out. The only things it had been put up to contain had run for perhaps three days inside it, and done their work, and been carted away again. It was an odd business, and a shocking waste of money.

  I thought of going back for the stick, which I knew I could find again, but it was the eastern end of the wood that drew me. There was extraordinary little sign of the pigs. I edged up towards the side of the gate, where my hide had been, and saw Carol standing in the upstairs window. She was there only for a second. Then she turned and went back into the room. I did not think she could possibly have seen me. I was desperate to speak to her, but did not know what I could safely do. Dennis Wainwright might be in Burtonbridge or London, or he might be round the next corner of the red-brick wall. He might, most probably, be in his dark study at the back of the house, sitting behind his empty desk and thinking about I did not know what.

  I climbed over the gate and walked slowly down the tarmac. I had a right to be there and did not think he would be likely to shoot me down in daylight on the public highway. I had got past reasoning. I merely went from point to point, like a desperate man wading into a river he has got to cross if he can, content to try again so long as the last step has not carried him away.

  I walked to the small front gate, put a hand to open it and then stopped dead. Dennis Wainwright was in the front garden. He was on his hands and knees, working on a flower bed under the front window. Most of what I saw was his behind, massive and uncompromising in almost black trousers. The seat of the trousers was polished with much sitting. It was evidently one of his extraordinary dark suits, relegated to gardening after he had rubbed the nap off it sitting at his desk. Occasionally he swung a little sideways, and I had a glimpse of the great head, under its heavy grey thatch, bent down over the earth of the tiny suburban bed. He muttered to himself as he worked, but I could not hear what he said.