Touch Not the Cat

by Mary Stewart

  ‘Harry Who’s clue?’

  I laughed. It was the first real laugh since I had come home. ‘Oh, Rob! A girl called Ariadne. She gave Theseus the clue to follow into the maze. Greek myths, you know. William’s writing about the maze, and getting a bit precious with his Greeks and Romans.’

  ‘How should I know? We can’t all do Greek and Roman at school, can we?’ said Rob, unworried.

  The kettle boiled and I made the Nescafé. ‘Don’t come the ignorant peasant over me, Rob Granger. You did Greek myths at Ashley school along with me. I remember it perfectly well. Here.’

  He took his mug from me and followed me back into the sitting-room. ‘Don’t be daft. I never did Greek in my life.’

  ‘Well, heavens, neither did I. I meant we did the stories in English. Don’t you remember that book with the pictures? Icarus with those gorgeous big wings, and the Gorgons with snakes in their hair, and the Minotaur? That was the monster who lived in the middle of a maze, and Ariadne got this ball of wool or whatever, and gave it to Theseus, and he went in and fought him.’

  ‘Yes, I remember that.’ He sat down in the armchair, stretched his long legs in front of him, and stirred his coffee. It was the chair Jeffrey Underhill had sat in, and I could not help a flash of comparison. Rob did not, as the American had done, dominate the room, but somehow his quality of relaxation, of looking at home wherever he happened to be, made itself quite as strongly felt as the other man’s powerful composure. ‘He had a bull’s head. A black Dexter, by the look of him. Tricky tempered beasts.’

  ‘Don’t you remember, we used to play it here in the maze? I had the ball of wool, and you were the Minotaur, and I had to show Theseus the way in.’

  ‘And got lost,’ he said, grinning. ‘I remember sitting there in the middle and hearing you hollering for help, and wondering if I’d ever get out myself. Then James came in and killed me.’

  ‘I told you you knew the story.’

  ‘Aye, I remember it now. I never was much of a hand at stories, was I, but I was good at sums. I had the better of you there, every time. You used to copy from my book.’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘You did. And who was it told the teacher that a polygon was a dead parrot?’

  ‘Isn’t it? Oh, Rob, you’ve made me feel better! Another cup?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  He set his empty mug down on the hearth beside him. ‘Did I see Mr Underhill going up through the orchard with Cathy? Had they been here? I suppose they came to tell you they’d be leaving tomorrow?’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘Well, yes. I’m the caretaker, remember? She told me when I went up to the house. Must have been while he was here with you.’

  ‘That wasn’t all he came for,’ I said. I gave him the gist of what had passed, and he thought it over for a few moments, then looked up.

  ‘Are you really going to this party?’

  ‘I think so. Cathy was very upset, and I think she’d feel that everything was all right if I did go. Besides, I’d like a chance to put things straight with Mrs Underhill.’

  ‘Will your cousins be there?’

  ‘I didn’t like to ask, but the party was arranged some time ago, so I imagine they will be, unless Mr Underhill tells them they’re not welcome any more. I wouldn’t put it past him.’

  ‘Then I’ll take you to the train.’

  ‘Well, thank you, but I can use the Lambretta, and leave it in the station yard.’

  ‘And carry your party frock?’

  ‘I’ve done it before.’ I smiled at him. ‘But it was nice of you to think about it.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Rob uncompromisingly. ‘I was thinking that I didn’t want James or Emory to drive you.’

  I was silent for a moment. ‘Rob, you can’t, you really can’t think that this “danger” thing could involve Emory or James deliberately harming me.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He made a restless little movement, rather unlike him. ‘We’ve had all this. Which of us knows what he’d do when pushed? And they are being pushed. Let’s not leave it to chance.’

  ‘That’s pure melodrama.’

  ‘Maybe.’ The stubborn line was very pronounced round his mouth. ‘But to see that they don’t is pure commonsense.’ A glimmer. ‘We peasants have a lot of that.’

  ‘But they don’t know about the silver pen and the photograph.’

  ‘No, but they know you’re no fool, and they want something badly enough to make them do what they’ve already done.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Once we admit that the thing’s been done at all, it doesn’t matter about the motives. I’ll be careful. Well, all right, thanks. And the Underhills asked me to stay the night, so you don’t have to meet the milk train . . . Rob?’

  He looked an inquiry.

  I asked: ‘Have you heard anything yet about Francis?’

  ‘Not a thing, but then you know Francis. He never did write letters, or listen to the radio, or behave like anyone else. I remember him saying once that he had his own means of communication, and that was good enough for him.’

  I looked up. ‘Did he? What do you suppose he meant?’

  He moved an indifferent shoulder. ‘His poetry, I suppose. Is it any better than that stuff there?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes – that is, I don’t know. I don’t understand a word of it.’ I picked up my own empty mug, and crossed to pick up Rob’s from the hearth. ‘I wish he’d show up, that’s all. I just get a queer feeling that it might solve a thing or two.’

  He got to his feet. ‘Well, I’d better be going. Thanks for the coffee.’

  ‘You’re welcome. At least you won’t worry about me tonight if the twins are both away in Bristol.’

  ‘No. But I’ll still take a look, if I may, to see if the door has a decent bolt. That’s something I never checked. Would you like me to leave Bran with you?’

  ‘Oh, no. He’d whine all night. I promise I’ll lock the doors and windows, and I’ve got a telephone.’

  And time was, I thought, as Rob went to look at the back door, that I’d have had a private line if I needed it. But not any more. Not one I can use . . .

  He finished his inspection and came in. ‘Seems okay. You should be safe. Well, I’ll go now. Good night, Bryony.’

  ‘Good night. And Rob—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thanks for everything.’

  He smiled. ‘For nothing. ’Night.’

  When he had gone, with Bran like a shadow as usual at his heels, I locked and bolted the door behind him, feeling a fool as I did so. For all that had happened, for all he had said, this was still my old familiar place, and the men we had been talking about were my own cousins. One of them, in spite of all seeming, might still be my own dear friend.

  But I bolted the back door and checked the window catches for myself, and when I went up the narrow stair, I took the Brooke with me, and went to sleep with it under my pillow.

  I woke with the feeling that I had just come out of a lovely and familiar dream. There had been a beach, a long, long shore of golden sand which stretched as far as the eye could reach. Farther. Ninety miles . . . Why did I think it was ninety miles long? There were dunes behind it, pale sand with long reeds blowing in the wind. The ocean poured and poured eternally in from the west. Tall grasses with feathered tops nodded and blew. The sky was huge and clean and the sand felt hot and the wind full of the sea’s salt. Lonely, beautiful, quiet and safe.

  Safe, safe safe . . . The word went on echoing in Rob’s voice round the dim walls of my bedroom. I remembered it all, then, the book under my pillow, the locked doors and windows, my cousins away in Bristol, the telephone by my bed if I should need reassurance.

  The moon was bright. I slipped out of bed and went to the window. The striped print curtains hardly kept the moonlight out. The lattice was open. Feeling half silly for doing so, I kept carefully behind one of the curtains and looked out.

  The window faced on the orchard. The moon was fu
ll on the blossoming trees. At the near corner, tallest of them all, the old pear tree lifted its graceful boughs, etched as black and symmetrical as the leads across a white window where moonlight poured. The bloom was like a cloud, piled shapes of light, and shadow that wasn’t shadow, but just a dimmer moonwhite. It was a tree in a dream.

  A shadow moved under it, intercepting the moon. Someone was standing there.

  No, I was wrong. The pear tree’s clouded shade was still again, and empty. It had been a trick of the moonlight, nothing more, something conjured up by moon and blossom, and a silence that should surely have been filled with nightingales. Lovers’ time; Juliet at her window; Romeo under the orchard trees in the moonlight:

  Lady, by yonder blessèd moon I swear

  That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops . . .

  But it was not. It was an ordinary, empty night, where I dared not even summon what I had been used to of comfort. No lover to lure back like a bird on a silken thread. If I were to play Juliet at all, it would be Brooke’s Juliet, with her hugy heap of very prosaic fears and her hithering-thithering torments of indecisive love.

  I went to bed. But not to sleep. The hugy heap was as oppressive as a heavy quilt. I lay and watched the ceiling and thought about James, and all the uneasy tangled skein of what had happened.

  I could not believe, even with the evidence, that he was guilty. But Rob had said – and it was true – that we none of us know what we are capable of . . . And if he was guilty, what then? Was I to deny this powerful tie between us? Was I to believe it was only an accident of blood, of family, rather than a natural – God-given? – indication that we were sides of the same complete human being, that we had to be mates? Was it both arrogant and foolish to pretend that I was any better, or indeed any different, from him? We are all capable, Rob had said. Not of killing my father, no, that I would never believe. But if it had been an accident, and the rest the result of natural panic afterwards . . . I had said that I would forgive. And if I could extend that charity to strangers, how much more to my cousin?

  I sat up, hugging my knees. I put my forehead down on them, pressing it hard against them as if that would clear my thoughts. Was I, like so many of my generation, so afraid to condemn, so fearful of ‘priggishness’, that I was in danger of letting the good things slide, and accepting the far-from-best, till it became the norm, and excellence was forgotten? Society kept him and protected him. Was it priggish in me to want him to obey its laws?

  I lifted my head again. No, it was simpler than that. Panic after an accident was forgivable; to use it for profit was not.

  But there was nothing I could do until the answer came back from Herr Gothard. I was still on my own. And I must stay that way until the mystery, such as it was, was solved.

  It sounded easier than it was. I lay down again in my quiet airy bedroom, and watched the moonflung shadow of the pear tree move imperceptibly across the ceiling, and so strong was his insistence at that darkened door that I could have sworn that I saw his very shadow move with it, more substantial than the image of the blossoming boughs.

  For one weak second I took my hand from the bars, and felt him close beside me, so close that . . .

  Close beside me. I sat up like a pulled puppet. It had been so near, so insistent, so powerful and instilled with protection, that I knew he was here in the flesh as well. And I knew where. In the same moment’s flash my opened mind had received another pattern; the pear tree’s blossoming boughs, between my eyes and the moon.

  He was in the orchard, under the pear tree. And whatever he had done, whoever he was, he meant me no harm.

  I flung back the bedclothes and reached a coat down from behind the door. It was a soft light fur fabric, with a high collar and a tie-belt. I fastened it round me, then, barefooted as I was, ran lightly down the stairs and out into the orchard.

  The collie met me before I had gone two steps past the gate. I stopped dead.

  Rob came out from under the pear tree into the moonlight.

  I managed to speak, but it came out like a croaking whisper. ‘What are you doing here? It must be two o’clock.’

  I thought he hesitated, but his voice sounded quite normal.

  ‘I said I’d keep an eye on you, remember? Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. But – do you mean to stay here all night? I’m sure there’s no need.’

  ‘It’s a nice night. I was thinking.’

  ‘What – what about?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I was thinking about New Zealand.’

  ‘New Zealand?’ It was so improbable that I found my voice. ‘Oh, I remember – those brochures in the cottage kitchen.’

  ‘Aye.’ He hadn’t moved. He seemed to be waiting. The collie was jumping up at me. I fended it off absently, and went slowly towards him over the wet grass.

  ‘What about New Zealand, Rob?’

  ‘I was thinking that’s where I’d like to go when I leave here. Up to the North. I was thinking about the Ninety Mile Beach.’

  I said shakily: ‘So was I.’

  I took another step towards him. He moved as fast as the collie had, and took hold of me, pulling me tightly against him. As he began to kiss me, the hugy heap of trouble melted like snow, and above us in the pear tree a nightingale began to sing.

  If the laden arches of pear blossom had suddenly sprung to life like a fountain, tossing a plume of bright water as far as the moon, it would hardly have seemed surprising, so great was the release, the flood of joy that swept through me. Through him, too. I felt light and happiness pouring through his mind into mine, and back again, like a tide-race meeting the outflow of a river, clashing and doubling and throwing up drowning waves of pleasure. We were both perhaps a little mad. We clung and kissed and clung again, wordless. I doubt if either of us could have spoken. Everything had already been said, everything shared. This was the end of the courtship, and not the beginning. Even my body seemed already to know his. This was how I had thought it would be, this complete knowing, this spontaneous melting and meeting. This was why, when James had made love to me, and I had found myself shrinking from him, I had been puzzled and afraid, no longer trusting the bond between myself and my secret friend.

  Now it was I who held fast, and murmured: ‘It’s been so long, so long. No, don’t let me go.’

  ‘I’ll never do that. Not ever, not now.’ His voice was muffled and husky, the country accent sounding stronger than usual. I was shaken yet again by a wave of love so powerful that it seemed to tear me apart to take him in.

  ‘Rob, oh, Rob.’ I ran my fingers into his hair, tilting his head back so that the moonlight, intercepted faintly by the blossoming boughs, lit his face. ‘How on earth I didn’t guess it was you . . . All the time, all the time I’d been thinking it had to be James or Francis, and yet it never seemed right. And all the time it’s been you; it was you I ran to when I wanted help or comfort; it was your house that was home. And then this last few days, it was always you . . .’

  ‘Bryony.’ It came out on a long breath, fierce with relief and the pent frustration of years. ‘Eh, Bryony . . .’

  It wasn’t returning sanity, but the chill of the soaking grass on my bare feet, that made me draw away eventually and say: ‘Rob, let’s go in now.’

  ‘Go in?’ He repeated it as if he had hardly heard me. He shook his head like someone surfacing from deep water, and said it again, understanding. ‘Go in?’

  ‘Yes. The grass is wet, and my feet are like ice.’

  ‘The more fool you for not putting your shoes on.’ His hold on me was relaxed now, affectionate. His voice was his own again, and he was smiling. ‘All right, you’d better go in. High time you did, if you ask me. Come along.’ He picked me up as easily as if I were a sack of meal, and began to carry me back across the grass to the cottage.

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I meant both of us. Won’t you stay?’

  There was a pause of seconds, then he shook his head. ‘No. I’ve
waited all my life for you, and I reckon I can wait a bit longer. We’ll leave all that for its right place.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘After we’re married.’ Then, as I took a breath: ‘Tomorrow night.’

  ‘Oh, Rob, be your age. You need a licence, and a special costs twenty-five pounds, and where do you think we can raise that? And if you start on at me about breaking the damned trust for a bit of ready money—’

  Rob said something rather rustic about the trust, and stopped to kiss me again.

  I pulled my mouth away. ‘It can’t be tomorrow night. It can’t be for ages.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, even if you could get a licence tomorrow, the Vicar probably wouldn’t consent to marry us on the spur of the moment.’

  ‘Spur of the moment nothing. I told you I’ve waited all my life, and so have you. Anyway, I’ve talked to the Vicar. He thinks it’s a good thing.’

  ‘Does he? But he didn’t know that I—’

  ‘Oh, yes, he did. He’s known for a long time how I felt about you, and then after you’d talked to him yesterday I reckon he saw the whole thing. He never told me anything you’d said to him, but he did let on to me that your Dad had said he’d sooner see you wedded to me than to anyone else he knew.’

  ‘Daddy did?’

  ‘So the Vicar told me. Better ask him yourself. But I don’t think he’ll worry much if we ask him to marry us straight away.’

  ‘N-no. Perhaps not. I did tell him about – well, about what we had together. And if Daddy really said that, and if the Vicar knew all the time that it was you—’

  ‘Seems so,’ said Rob. ‘Well, I’ll see him first thing, shall I? All he can do is refuse, but I think he’ll consent.’

  ‘But the licence!’

  ‘I’ve had a licence burning a hole in my pocket for two weeks now. It cost six pounds,’ said my lover. ‘Far-sighted and thrifty, us peasants. Do you think I’d spend twenty-five quid on getting a woman when I can get one for six?’

  ‘You could have one for nothing right now.’

  ‘Marriage or naught,’ said Rob austerely, and set me down laughing on the cottage step.