He took her hand. ‘Dear love, you’ve got to think of this very carefully. If possible you’ve got to try and detach yourself from your feelings and take a good cold look at them.’
‘I’ve tried.’
‘I’m sure you have. But I believe there’s the risk of your doing a Florence Nightingale on yourself. That’s the risk. You may truly believe you’re in love with him but really be in love with the idea of helping him – helping him to recover, to fulfil himself, to become a whole man for the first time in his life. I don’t say that’s a bad thing at all. He seems to me a man infinitely worth helping – and someone whose paintings might eventually come to count for something. But you’ve got to look at your wish to help him and recognize it for what it is. It may not be what you think it is at all. It may be half mother-love, half a devotion to the idea of service.’
‘I don’t think you’re right, Christopher, but of course I can’t prove you’re wrong. I can only try to explain to you why I feel this about him. It began almost as soon as we met but for a time I couldn’t – or wouldn’t – recognize it for what it was. You don’t argue with a thing like that. You don’t even try to rationalize it. If you did, then the explanation might be – might seem to imply what you suggest. But it isn’t that really. I know it isn’t that!’
‘And what do you intend to do?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea. None yet. It will depend altogether on what happens when we get away from here.’
‘Shall you marry him?’
‘Heaven knows. Don’t ask me.’
‘But if he does?’
‘Then, yes, I suppose so. But don’t press this too far. I’m – I’m trying to play fair with you, as well as with him. That’s why I felt I had to tell you this when you came back – try to explain. You may feel now that this more or less lets you out and that you’d rather I tried to get along without you . . .’
‘No, my dear, even I have my altruism . . .’
‘Don’t be offended, please.’
‘I’m offended that you should think my interest in you so narrow . . .’
‘Well, I had to say that, for it’s true. But if you want to continue to help me, then you must be willing to help us.’
He was silent for a long minute. ‘So be it.’
She frowned. ‘I said – I began to say – that I’d rather you didn’t press too hard at the moment. Nothing has been planned. It’s all still more a matter of feeling than words. Once we’re away from here things may change – bring us close together or thrust us farther apart. All I feel at the moment is that he loves me, and – and that I am committed to him. Beyond that everything is vague, unformulated. I’d really rather not have tried to explain. But I just couldn’t – as it were – sail under false colours.’
The house was quiet. He released her hand, which had been entirely quiescent under his.
‘I wish I’d kidnapped you on Saturday.’
‘I was already involved then.’
‘It’s a bitter pill . . . Not that I’m yet wholly willing to swallow it. But I’ll play it as you want.’
‘Thank you.’
‘As I said, perhaps he is rather worth salvaging. Certainly more so than I am.’
‘You don’t need – salvaging, as you call it. You’re very self-reliant – and self-sufficient.’
‘Don’t be too sure. But I’ll not base my appeal on that. Nor must you base your judgment on it. I think you’ve got to go very carefully from here on, Norah. There’s a lot more to be considered – all sorts of questions I want to ask.’
‘Don’t ask them.’
‘I won’t. Not yet. But they’ll have to be asked sometime. Meanwhile . . .’
She nodded. ‘It’s late.’
‘Yes, I’ll go.’
‘Can you get out safely?’
‘If you can be left safely.’
‘Why ever not? What can happen?’
‘I’m thinking of your physical safety now, the other having already gone by the board.’
She smiled. ‘There are three hikers sleeping here and only a few hours till morning. I don’t think Althea’s that dangerous.’
‘Well, there’s a lot at stake for her. I trust her as far as I would a rattlesnake.’
‘She’d never go beyond certain limits. She wouldn’t endanger her own position.’
‘She already has.’
Norah got up. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But I think one mustn’t over-rate her. D’you know, during this horrible quarrel I knew that she really had been fond of me, and this made her all the more angry and bitter and in a way confused.’
‘And perhaps more desperate.’ He got up too. ‘So I’ll be back early – by ten at the latest. Avoid her altogether till then.’
‘I will. Good night, Christopher. And – I’m truly very sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I’m still hoping.’
He kissed her.
‘Especially,’ he said, ‘don’t be sorry for this.’
She let him out, and after a moment turned to lower the wick of the lamp, which had been sending up a watch-spring of smoke. If she had felt un-sleepy before, this final meeting of the night had swept away the last vestiges of repose. She no longer had a brain but an overwound machine that would be nerve-powered throughout the night.
Yet she must rest, she must put out the light and lie quietly in bed, content with decisions taken, content that any hazards that had to be faced were tangible ones. The hauntings, the fear, the fear of Marion, of the unknown, were all past. Althea’s enmity, though horrible, was easier to bear. She unzipped her frock, stepped out of it and hung it up. Then she began to take off her stockings. As she did so there was a tapping at her door.
Her dressing-gown was in the bathroom. She sheltered behind the wardrobe door and called: ‘Who is it?’
The door opened. It was Christopher.
‘What d’you want?’ she asked.
His grey eyes glanced briefly over what he could see of her. ‘Your advice, chiefly. This big door out here . . .’
‘Which one?’
‘This great thing at the head of the stairs. It’s locked and I think bolted.’
II
Presently, dressed again, she joined him. What he said was the truth.
‘It’s never even been closed since I came,’ she said. ‘It’s always looped back on the chain. You didn’t touch it when you came up?’
‘Hardly. Why should I?’
‘D’you think someone saw you coming up?’
‘No.’
‘There’s no key. I’ve never seen a key. But there were bolts . . .’
‘Which appear to have been shot.’ He pulled at the big metal ring which lifted the latch. ‘You could never break this down – at least not without making enough noise to wake the dead. It’s oak – in fact it looks like a fair copy of the front door.’
‘Yes . . . The other one – the one in the other house that matches this – has a key. Because that’s the door that leads to Simon’s studio. But he always keeps that locked. Even if we pulled part of the wall down you’d only be in the other attics.’
He rubbed his hair. ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like to think someone saw me coming up here. But the alternative is no more likeable.’
‘That they were locking me in?’
‘Yes. I think that’s it. I suppose Mrs Syme instructed Doole to do it, to keep you where you belong. But I can’t understand why he didn’t bolt the door before I came up – the house was dead when I ventured in.’
‘She may have intended it as a gesture. She wants to make me out as untrustworthy, so she bolts me in until tomorrow morning when Doole will come up and say: “The car’s waiting”.’
Christopher walked back into the bedroom and drew back the curtains at the window. The moon was sinking, and a flicker of lightning moved among the bold, anthracite-coloured clouds.
‘Nobody could get out of here without a fractured skull. It would be almost impos
sible even to get on the roof. So it looks as if you’re lumbered with me for the rest of tonight.’
She said, still pursuing her own thoughts: ‘It’s – more complicated than ever now. You see, she may be reckoning that when I try to go down in the morning and find the door bolted I shall kick up such a fuss – hammering on the door etc. – that your three hikers will be excellent witnesses to my anti-social behaviour. If Doole is prepared to swear that I have been carrying on with Simon and even making approaches to him, my credibility as a witness to Simon’s complaints won’t be very high.’
‘Still less now.’
‘Yes,’ she said, eyeing him, ‘still less now.’
He threw his head back. ‘Well, I’m sorry for that – if that’s the idea. Otherwise I’m glad I’m here. In the meantime, can I sleep in your sitting-room? I won’t make other suggestions – much as I should like to – because this clearly isn’t the time or place.’
‘Oh, Christopher. No.’ She smiled at him. ‘I feel you’ve been so kind, that it’s not much fun to find yourself keeping company with a girl who has – suddenly – pledged herself elsewhere . . .’
He smiled back. ‘Who knows what my fun will be yet?’
He kissed her again. He made it a long kiss, and she did not for some moments break away.
‘Well, that’s it,’ he said. ‘Good night again. And now for the rocking-horse.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I
For an apparently passive boy Gregory Syme had a very active brain. And for a short-sighted boy he saw a great deal.
He had few interests in life, but those few were diamond sharp, and one person he thought he understood better than she understood herself. His attitude towards his mother was a mixture of dependence, of affection, and of patronage. He relied upon her for so much – as he had always done since a child: she saw to his clothes, his food, his likes and dislikes, his health, his wealth and his well-being. He could hardly imagine life without her, and while he often found her love oppressive, especially as he grew into mid-adolescence, he mutely returned the love. Yet he had altogether too sharp an eye not to be aware of her faults, and in some ways he thought her a silly woman. He knew she was gifted both as a writer and as a speaker – far more gifted than he could ever be – but in almost every other respect he knew himself to be cleverer than she was. Like many young people, he tended to despise older people, as if their longer time on earth made them automatically less gifted, or as if youth were not a passing phase but a prize awarded for special virtue. Unsullied by knowledge but armed with certainties, he observed his mother closely and saw all her faults.
One certainty he carried close to his heart was that she had been abysmally silly about Morb House and about Simon. Of course it had all begun before he was old enough to understand; but since he became old enough he had listened and watched, and particularly attended to what his mother did and said, and he had arrived at something like a full understanding.
As a very small boy Gregory remembered visiting his Uncle Hubert and his Aunt Arabella at Morb House, and there meeting his cousins Simon and Marion. But they were so much older than he – fifteen years and more – that they had appeared totally grown up and aloof from him in every way; and it was not until Marion was drowned and Simon had had his breakdown that he had come more frequently with his mother and then had finally moved here so that his mother could look after her sick nephew.
Gregory remembered many things about those early years but only later was he able to piece them together. He remembered Simon’s strangeness, his long bouts of depression, during which he was not himself allowed near his cousin. He remembered the frightful occasion when Simon had been found with a rope around his neck and the long discussion with doctors, from which he, Gregory, was carefully excluded. He did not know until much later of the power of attorney that Simon had willingly granted to his aunt before going to a mental home for treatment; nor of the renewal of this grant each year that followed. Still less in those early days did he appreciate the uses to which his mother occasionally put her privileges. Quite by chance, barely a year ago, he had tumbled to the combination of the little safe where many secrets lay hidden (his mother had chosen for the combination the day, month and year of his birth) so that the next time he was alone he was able to open it and look through all the ledgers and the correspondence.
He was startled by what he found. The creation of two new trusts, of which he was the benefactor, the shifting of monies and properties from trusts beneficial to Simon. He didn’t understand the legal language but he saw the purpose.
He quite clearly remembered his life before he came here and he remembered the poverty of it. After his father – a Territorial who never saw active service – had driven home drunk from a dance and killed himself it had been worse; though even before that it was a sort of pretence life in which they shammed well-to-do and all the time existed under the shadow of the next writ. Though then so young, he remembered the terrible rows his father and mother had had, because he would hear them through the wall; and after them his mother would often come into his room and enlist his sympathy against the ill-behaviour and neglect she was suffering. Usually there was another woman mentioned, and although he didn’t understand at that stage quite what was meant, he came to detest his father for making his mother so unhappy.
But when Captain Syme died, deep in debt, they had had to leave their house and move into two rooms where even the pretence could be carried on no longer. His mother had been trying her hand at freelance journalism for some time, but paper shortages made it impossible as a livelihood, and she had had to depend on subsidies from relatives to keep going.
So the invitation to live at Morb House had changed their lives, and in a few years he had seen his mother blossom and expand, physically as well as mentally, and become a distinguished woman writer and speaker. Money and position had opened many doors, and they had lived happily here until the summer just past. Then he had become aware that his mother was worrying over something, and that something was Simon.
Gregory did not understand everything about Simon, but he had heard the word schizophrenia mentioned and he knew that schizophrenics by definition never got better. Gregory had read all about dementia praecox, and knew that people who suffered from it simply went from bad to worse until they eventually, after many years, fell into a stupor and died. Therefore Simon was never likely to return to Morb House or indeed to be free in the world again. Everyone believed that. It was sad, but as it turned out this made things very comfortable for them.
So, although his mother did not confide her worries to him, Gregory gradually began to suspect the truth, and one day, making his monthly inspection of the safe, he found a letter from the senior physician of the Conran Nursing Home saying that their new treatment had effected a complete cure and that Simon Syme was free to leave at any time he wished. In fact, the physician went on, as Mr Syme had been a voluntary patient throughout, this would have been true at any time; but he could assure Mrs Syme that Mr Syme was now perfectly able to face the world and, what was more, wished to do so.
This clearly presented a dilemma for his mother, since all her present positions depended on her remaining in control of Simon’s affairs; but it was not until he had made another very careful examination of the papers in the safe that Gregory began to appreciate the risks his mother had been taking.
It was so stupid, Gregory thought. So like a woman to get confused over money and legal affairs. True, if Simon returned and showed no interest in their remaining, they would necessarily leave and be in poor circumstances again. But there was nothing to prove he should wish them to leave if they played their cards correctly. Much better to have done that than take the greater risk of misusing her position.
And all for him, Gregory; that was the most pathetic and lovable and stupid thing of all. Of course he had also read the copy of Simon’s will, made shortly after his parents died, leaving everything to his sister and i
f she should predecease him without issue, then equally to the Slade School, the Tate Gallery and two French academies. So that his mother had seen the danger to her welfare as more likely to arise from Simon’s death than from his recovery. And she had been trying to make provision against that, in order when the time came that he, Gregory, should have a substantial fortune of his own.
And Simon’s recovery had caught her unawares, off guard, facing, as it were, the wrong way.
It was all very infuriating, and the measures his mother had taken to defend herself had been typically feminine and ill-considered. Now they were in a mess, up to their eyes, and he could see no way out. This girl his mother had brought here, for reasons he had only half appreciated, was going to be the worst complication of all. This evening, wandering out of the drawing-room and hearing voices from the study, he had drifted silently along and had heard pretty well the whole of Norah’s quarrel with his mother. With a vindictive woman against them they’d hardly stand a chance. If his mother had tried she could hardly have managed it worse.
She had been drinking today, too, which was rare. He’d known it sometimes when he was a little boy, but her affluence had changed all that. Comfort, authority, position: they had been better for her than any bottle-bred stimulus.
Almost on top of her quarrel with the Faulkner woman the hikers had arrived, and Gregory had observed the tension and agitation under his mother’s superficial calm. It was well done but it hadn’t deceived him. So when they all finally drifted off to bed and the house settled down for the night he went along to his mother’s bedroom to make sure she was all right. He found her in tears.
This was a new experience. Even in the bad days when she had come to his room after a scene with his father he had never known her cry. She was always so strong, so self-reliant, so calm. Even when she had been at the brandy. Even when she insisted on being stupid, when she did things that were not to his liking, even when she acted ‘for the best’ when his superior reasoning told him she was wrong, she had always been strong, self-reliant, calm. Intellectually he might rather despise her but emotionally he had always relied on her. Now, although he knew and understood her concern, why she cried, the sight of it upset him more than he could say. It aroused a new sensation within him – one he had not felt before for her or for anyone else – the feeling of pity. For a few moments he hated her for infecting his spirit with it.
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