Lady of Hay

by Barbara Erskine

  Jo swallowed. “I know. I’m terribly sorry. I don’t quite know how it happened.”

  Sheila nodded. “I expect your boyfriend had had a bit too much to drink. He doesn’t seem to have been himself lately, does he?” she said pointedly. Her eyes were busy, darting past Jo into the apartment. “Harry said he heard him leave. He must have missed his footing on the stairs, Harry said, because he swore so dreadfully! So it echoed up and down the stairwell. My dear, I know blasphemy doesn’t mean anything to you younger people these days, but really, to swear by Christ’s bones! What in the world is it, dear? Are you all right?”

  Jo had grabbed at the door jamb for support as the blood drained from her head and a strange roaring filled her ears. She felt the other woman’s fingers on her elbow, then an arm was around her shoulders as slowly Sheila helped her back inside the apartment and pushed her gently down onto the sofa. She realized Sheila was bending over her, her face full of concern. Her mouth was moving; she was still talking. With an enormous effort Jo tried to understand what she was saying. “Shall I get you some water, dear?” The words seemed to come from a huge distance away. Weakly Jo shook her head.

  William! William had been there in the flat with her! Like the baby, other people had heard him. He had shown himself as a real presence.

  She sat up with a terrific effort of will. “I am sorry.” She took a deep steadying breath. “I—I saw a doctor yesterday about these dizzy spells. They’re so silly. I’ll—I’ll try to make sure there isn’t any noise in future. I am sorry you were disturbed, only William—” She bit off a hysterical laugh. “William doesn’t understand about apartments. He’s not used to them, you see. In fact, he’s not really used to neighbors at all.”

  Sheila stood up and with a little automatic gesture twitched her skirt straight. “I see. He lives in the country, does he? Well, we’ll say no more about it.” She glanced around the room. “Do call upstairs, dear, if you are feeling poorly, won’t you? I’m always in. Would you like me to make you a nice cup of tea now?”

  Jo shook her head. “That’s kind but I’ve some coffee, and I was just going to get dressed.” She pulled herself upright. “Once again, I am sorry about the noise.”

  Obviously reluctant to leave, Sheila backed slowly toward the hall, but at last she was once more out on the landing and resolutely Jo closed the door behind her.

  Slowly she walked back toward the bedroom and picked up her cold cup of coffee. Sipping it with a grimace, she sat down on the end of the bed; she hadn’t even the energy suddenly to go and warm it up.

  On the floor something touched her bare foot.

  Looking down, she saw, half hidden by the folds of the bedspread, a broad leather belt.

  ***

  “Look, Jo, I can only take a short break.” Tim tucked the receiver closer to his ear as he looked over his shoulder at the two models on the dais. He sighed. “I tell you what. I’ll meet you at Temple subway at twelve. We’ll go for a quick walk along the Embankment. That really is all the time I can spare today. Are you sure you’re okay, Jo?” he added. She sounded strangely tense and breathless.

  “I’m fine, Tim. See you at twelve.”

  As he picked up his camera, he turned back to George with a grimace. “I’m going to have to go out in a couple of hours, so let’s get this show on the road. Now,” he said.

  Jo was sitting on a bench in the Embankment Gardens near the statue of John Stuart Mill, staring reflectively at the pigeons pecking around her feet. She glanced up with a smile when she saw him. “Have you ever tried to photograph that incredible color in their necks? I’d love an evening dress like that.”

  “Try shot silk,” Tim said dryly. He was looking down at her intently. “You look very tired. What’s the matter, Jo?”

  “Can we walk up through the Temple?” She stood up and he saw her flinch slightly as she hitched the strap of her bag onto her shoulder. “It’ll help to keep moving.”

  “Anything you like.” With a half-regretful glance at the roses in the beds behind them, he fell into step beside her in silence, from time to time glancing at her. He was puzzled and a little apprehensive.

  “I had to talk to someone, Tim,” she said at last as they climbed the steps up into Essex Street slowly. “I’m going to give it all up. The book, the articles, the whole idea. I’m not going to follow it through anymore.” She hesitated. “I thought I might fly over to the States.”

  “With Nick, you mean?” His voice was carefully neutral as they walked slowly down Devereux Court and turned into the Temple.

  “He left this morning—” She stopped, then she began again, fumbling for words. “I can’t cope, Tim. Last night something happened.” She eased her bag on her shoulder uncomfortably as they stood staring at the fountain. The high jet of water glittered in the sunlight, spattering slightly out of the circular base. Where they stood the grass had been walked away, save here and there where a few blades stuck up through the dusty soil, but in the shade of the trees the air smelled cool and fresh from the water. There was a yellow iris in the corner of the pool. She stared at it in silence for a moment.

  “Sam came over.”

  Tim’s eyes narrowed.

  “Some strange things happened, Tim, and they frightened me.” She began walking again and he followed her. “I had a regression, but I don’t think it was spontaneous. And I don’t think I was alone.”

  “You think Sam hypnotized you?”

  “He’s done it before. I asked him to. But this time I hadn’t, and I wanted him to leave, but I don’t think he did. I think he hypnotized me without my even knowing it. This morning I found—” She bit her lip. “I found a tape of music that I remember from the trance. Flute music, and I don’t think they even had flutes at that period—or at least not that kind of flute. It’s the only anachronistic thing that’s happened. And there was something else—” Again she stopped. This time she couldn’t go on. Glancing at her, Tim saw her face was pale, the skin drawn tight with fatigue and worry. He drove his hands into the pockets of his trousers, his fists clenched.

  “What else, Jo?” he said softly.

  She shook her head. “Tim, I think Sam may have somehow been directing the whole thing. I don’t think any of it was genuine after all. I think he’s behind it all—even you and Nick. Somehow he’s manipulated us all into believing that it was all real. Do you know, this morning when my nosy neighbor came down to complain about the music in the night, she said she’d heard someone leave the apartment and I thought it was William! I thought somehow he had manifested himself into a physical presence, like a ghost! Then I realized it must have been Sam they heard. It was Sam all the time. Sam still somehow pretending to be William…”

  Slowly they had walked on toward the Temple Church, and on impulse Tim pushed open the door and gestured to Jo to go in ahead of him out of the hot brilliant sunlight into the cool of the interior.

  “I have a feeling the whole thing is some sort of horrible hoax,” she went on, scarcely noticing where they were going. “I think Sam might even somehow have initiated the whole thing all those years ago when I was a student. None of it is real, Tim.” Her whispered words echoed around the silent church. “And I can’t bear it. I wanted it to have happened.” She took a deep breath, trying to steady the shakiness in her voice. “I know I’m not being objective! I know I’m being stupid and sentimental and I should have my head x-rayed again, but I can’t bring myself to believe it’s a hoax! I don’t want to believe it’s a hoax!”

  “It’s not a hoax, Jo,” Tim said softly. “In some ways I wish to God it were. But you are right in one thing. Sam is involved. He came to see me last week and I knew it then. He is part of it, Jo.”

  She stared at him. “How?” she breathed.

  “There were three of us, Jo, three men who all loved you as Matilda. And who all love you now.”

  In the silence that followed they looked up, startled, as a tourist, walking slowly around the church behind the
m, raised his camera and took a flash picture over Jo’s shoulder. He grinned at them apologetically and moved on.

  Jo stared down unseeing at the stone effigy of a knight lying before them on the ground. “Three men?” she echoed in a whisper. “Who?”

  Tim shrugged. “The only one I know about is Richard,” he said sadly. “Only Sam and Nick can tell you who they were, if you don’t know yet.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Sam hates Nick,” Jo said softly. “I never realized it until Mrs. Franklyn told me, then suddenly it was so obvious, in everything he does and everything he says.”

  “How well do you know Sam?” Tim put his arm around her shoulder.

  Gently Jo moved away from him. “I’ve known him about fifteen years. I like him. He’s fun and he’s kind and he’s very attractive. If Nick hadn’t come along I suppose I might have—” She stopped abruptly. “Oh, Tim—” Her voice shook.

  Tim took a deep breath. “Don’t let him hypnotize you again, Jo. Don’t ever trust him.”

  “No,” she whispered. “No. But it doesn’t matter now, because it’s all over. Whether it’s real or not, it is over. And I wanted you to know because…because you are…were…involved.”

  Tim bowed slightly. “Thanks.” He gave a rueful grin suddenly. “How strange! Do you see where we are, Jo?” He indicated the effigies at their feet.

  She stared down.

  One of the four stone effigies that lay with their feet toward the east was the carved figure of William Marshall, first Earl of Pembroke. On his left arm he carried a shield, in his right hand a sword. His face, moustached and bland, stared from his mail hood up past them toward the dome of the church, the eyes wide. One foot was broken, the other rested on a small snarling animal. A thin ray of sunlight straying through the clear glass of one of the south windows touched his face.

  “We knew him, you and I,” Tim said softly.

  For a moment neither of them moved, then Jo turned and, with a little sob, she almost ran from the church.

  Tim followed her slowly, closing the door behind him with a clatter that echoed in the silence of the building.

  She was standing outside, staring up at the sky. “I am going, Tim,” she said wildly. “I am going to the States. None of this will matter there.”

  Tim nodded slowly. “So. When will you leave?”

  She shrugged. “I’m seeing Bet late this afternoon. There’s a contract I’ve got to tear up.” She gave a rueful laugh. “Once that is over I’ll sort things out and leave as soon as I can.” She shivered. “It’s cold. Let’s do what you first suggested and walk down along the river.”

  The tide was high, the moored ships riding up alongside the river wall, the thick Thames water deeply opaque as it slopped cheerfully against the gray stone. They leaned on the wall and stared over at the river boats chugging up the center of the tide. Tim’s fingers itched suddenly for his camera as he stared south toward the opposite bank. The choppy water, sparkling in the breezy sunlight, threw a rippled haze of refracted light onto the black paintwork of the old Thames barge moored against the green piles.

  He took a deep breath. If Jo could throw off the past, surely to God he could too!

  Slowly they began to walk west toward Westminster. He glanced at his watch. “I have got to get back by two, Jo,” he said gently. “I’ve got another session starting then.”

  She smiled. The wind had pushed the hair back from her face, bringing some color back to her cheeks. “You do think I’m right to go, Tim.” She was almost pleading suddenly.

  “One can’t run away from destiny, Jo.” He didn’t look at her. “But then your destiny is tied up with Nick.”

  “Is it?” she said in a small voice. “All I know is, I want to be with him.” She walked on, her eyes narrowed in the dazzle of light off the water, watching the gulls wheeling and diving in the wake of a police launch as it churned westward. “The trouble is, I have a feeling that in that previous life of ours he hated me.”

  “You do know who he was, then?”

  Tim had almost to run to keep up with her as she began to walk faster and faster. Then she stopped dead, staring unseeing toward the Festival Hall across the glittering water.

  “But it’s not real, Tim,” she said at last. “That part of it is not real.”

  Tim clenched his fists in his pockets as she began walking once more, but he said nothing. It wasn’t until they reached Westminster that she stopped again.

  She turned to him at last. “You’ll have to take the subway back if you’re going to make it by two. I’m sorry. I’ve made you late.”

  He nodded.

  “Tim”—she caught his hands—“Tim, that night in Raglan. I’m glad it happened.”

  He smiled at her. “So am I, Jo.” The smile broadened. “I owe destiny one now.”

  “Perhaps in our next life…?”

  He laughed out loud. “It’s a date.”

  He stood watching as she dodged across the road and jumped on a bus as it moved up the road, then he turned toward the steps that led to the station near Westminster Pier. His smile had died as swiftly as it had come.

  ***

  “No! No! No!” Bet slammed her fist on her desk, making the pens jump up in the air. “No, you can’t tear up that contract! I won’t let you! If you try to wriggle out of this I’ll see your name is mud with every magazine in the country!”

  Jo sat tight-lipped in front of her. “Look, for God’s sake, be reasonable!”

  “I am being reasonable! I have offered you as much time as you need. I’ve promised you a monumental fee. I’ve offered any research facilities you care to name. I arranged for one of London’s top photographers to go with you to Wales. I will do any goddamn thing you like, Jo, but I want that series! What’s wrong, anyway? Is it Nick? He’s put you up to this, hasn’t he, the bastard! Or is it that you are afraid of him?” Her eyes were probing suddenly. “You didn’t tell me what happened in Wales.”

  Jo looked away. “Not much,” she said guardedly. “Look, Bet, please. You won’t get me to change my mind—”

  “Then you’ve got to give me a good reason for your decision. Did Nick threaten you?”

  Shaking her head, Jo sighed. “On the contrary. He told me he loved me.”

  “But! There has to be a but!”

  Jo smiled. “You’re right, of course. There are so many buts. Even so, I want to go to New York to be with him.”

  Bet groaned. “Jo, do you know what the temperature in New York was yesterday? It was ninety-four degrees with a humidity of ninety percent. Are you serious about going? You’ve only to touch another human being and you both die of nuclear fusion.”

  Jo laughed. “Isn’t it fission? If I remember, they’ve got pretty efficient air-conditioning over there—”

  “Passion flourishes on the streets,” Bet said darkly. With her customary impatience she stood up and went to her favorite stance by the window. “If it’s not Nick, then something else has happened to frighten you off,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to tell me what?”

  “I don’t think so, Bet. Let’s just say that I’m worried about my sometimes tenuous grip on sanity.”

  Bet laughed. “Oh, that!”

  “Yes, that. I’m not doing it, Bet. And you know you can’t make me. That contract only bound me to exclusivity.”

  Bet threw herself back into her chair. She took a deep breath. “Okay, I tell you what. Let’s both go away and think about it, and in the meantime you can do me a favor to put me in a good mood.”

  Jo relaxed a little, but even so she eyed Bet suspiciously. It was not like her to surrender so easily. “What favor?”

  “I’m planning to run an article about a fellow called Ben Clements and his wife. He is one of these self-sufficiency buffs. The types you were about to try to discredit in your original series. Back to nature, nostalgia—everything modern and chemical and easy is bad. Eve
rything old and muddy and difficult is good. How would you like to go and interview them for me? I want a nice three pages with pictures. But not Tim Heacham this time, please. I can’t afford it.”

  “I’ve heard of Clements,” Jo said thoughtfully. “He lives up in the Lake District somewhere, doesn’t he?”

  Bet looked vague. “I heard he’s moved. I’ll call up the file if you’re interested.”

  Jo smiled. “Okay. If I can do it straight away I will, just to put you in that good mood. Then I’ll go to New York.”

  Bet leaned forward and pressed the buzzer on her desk. “Sue? Get the Ben Clements file, would you?” She glanced over her glasses at Jo. “You won’t back out of this?”

  “I won’t back out of it.” Jo stood up. “You’ve got to try to understand about the other thing, Bet. It’s not just a series of articles. It’s me, and I can’t be objective about what’s happening anymore.”

  The door opened and Bet’s secretary appeared with a manila folder. She grinned at Jo as she put it on Bet’s desk.

  Bet flipped open the file. In it were one or two cuttings, some notes, and a photograph. She passed the photo to Jo. “There he is, a nice old boy by the look of him.”

  Jo studied the face before her. Ben Clements looked as if he were in his early sixties, his hair and beard white, his face tanned and wrinkled, netted with a thousand laughter lines.

  “I gather he has a young wife, and hers is the angle we want, of course. Here”—Bet thrust the file at her—“stick that in your bag and work on it when you get home. I am scheduling it for the December issue, so I’ll want it by the sixteenth at the latest. Obviously I don’t want you to make it too summery—but you needn’t waffle on about Father Christmas on the farm. I’ve enough references to seasonal spirit in the rest of the issue. I’m trusting you, Jo. Normally I’d get one of our own feature writers on this.”

  Jo took the file. “Don’t worry, Bet. You’ve made me feel so guilty already that I won’t let you down. I promise. I wouldn’t mind a trip up north actually.”