A Hint of Witchcraft (13 page)

He had brought flowers and grapes for Mrs Humbert who had been firmly imprisoned in the sitting-room out of harm's way.

‘Everybody is being useful. Is there something I can do?'

‘You can have coffee with Margot and me. She's bringing it now.'

Sarah saw the light in Margot's eyes as Miles took the tray from her, and the tenderness in his as he looked down at her, pleased that her hair was unbobbed. She wore it up with a curling fringe on her forehead. Her slimness made her seem taller. She was no longer a schoolgirl and that pleased him too.

It would be all right for her, Sarah thought, putting aside with regret a private plan of her own for Margot's future.

‘Not a real party,' Margot was explaining. ‘Just ourselves and a few friends. You'll come, won't you? It could be fun with everything in rather a mess and everyone will help.'

‘You've brought it with you,' he said. ‘All that I loved at Monk's Dene.' How could he describe the welcoming warmth and ease of friendship he had felt only with them; the closeness of sympathy he had felt for the first time in his life with Margot.

Lured by the fascination of falling snow, she had gone to the window. He put down his cup and joined her.

‘Just look at Alex.' He was rushing down the drive, bareheaded in the thickening flakes and buckling his trench coat as he ran. ‘He's going down to the road to wait for Linden. Lance is bringing her from town.'

‘Couldn't he wait indoors like a reasonable being?' Sarah's question was acid-tinctured. Where Linden was concerned, Alex was not reasonable.

‘What's he up to?'

Halfway down the slope and to the right, the old barn faced across fields with its back to the cart track. Gorse bushes growing against its blank wall were weighted with snow. Alex had come to an abrupt halt. He seemed to stoop, then crouch.

‘There's something there.' They peered through dizzily falling flakes.

‘I thought I saw someone there but that was quite a while ago.'

Sara was sufficiently intrigued to struggle out of her chair and join them.

‘Who on earth…?'

‘It's a woman. She must have been sheltering by the barn. He's helping her up. He's bringing her here.'

They made slow progress. It was two or three minutes before they came near enough to give a clearer view. The woman wore a long coat and what seemed a scarf over her hat. At one point she tottered and almost fell. Alex drew her arm over his shoulder and put his arm round her. Watching their slow advance, Margot felt a touch of apprehension. It was rather weird: the coming of a stranger in the depths of winter was like an incident in one of the old northern ballads, an intrusion from ancient times. Something was happening or was about to happen that belonged to a sphere quite alien to that of candles on the tree, mince-pies and crackers. But perhaps, in remembering it long after, knowing that foreboding would have been justified, she assumed that she had felt it.

She and Miles were at the open door when the woman sagged and fell. Alex picked her up and carried her the remaining few yards into the hall and put her on the settle. ‘Brandy,' he said. Her head sank forward as if her neck had given way and her face could be seen only in gaunt outline. It was fleshless and ashen white. Her hair had come undone: long dark strands draped the shoulders of her snow-sodden coat which was thin and worn: everything about her was thin and worn.

Margot unlaced the wet boots and drew them off, exposing black stockings and gaping patches of bare flesh. Shame for the unmended holes penetrated the woman's exhaustion. She shrank back, her head against the back of the settle.

‘Good heavens!' Margot said. ‘It's Toria Link.'

CHAPTER XI

The brandy revived her. She became aware of the surrounding faces – interested, anxious, kind. Her eyes came to rest on Alex. In their sunken depths a light flickered. Never in all her days had she been so steadily looked at. She was not a person who had attracted interest of any kind. For years she had existed in the back regions of Burdons' shop, unpaid and largely unknown. Only Margot and Sarah could have identified her.

The arrival of a car created a diversion and presently Lance joined the bizarre group under the Christmas tree.

‘Give her a hot drink and get her to bed, then feed her – but not too much at first. She's half starved.'

The two women in the kitchen stripped Toria of her wet clothes, wrapped her in a blanket and put her into a clean bed with a hot-water bottle. She was given soup and bread and butter and left to fall asleep.

Was it by coincidence that she had fallen by the wayside here at Langland Hall instead of among strangers? The topic was discussed at lunch. Nothing had been heard of Toria since volleys of bricks hurled at Miss Burdon's windows had driven her away, evidently preferring to face homelessness rather than the wrath of Ashlaw.

‘Not a coincidence,' Edward said. ‘She must have heard that we are here and came looking for work. I tell you, this place will be a haven for the outcast and homeless.' He said a good deal more in the same vein. Toria's unconventional arrival had put him in good humour: he was clearly doing the right thing and fulfilling a social obligation by providing work. Margot at least was infected by his enthusiasm. The meal was a cheerful one.

Except for Alex. To his disgust Linden had not come. According to Lance, who had called for her at Gordon Street, she was having lunch with a friend, would spend Christmas Day with her mother and come on Boxing Day in time for the party. There was no need to fetch her: a friend would drive her to Langland.

So unsatisfactory a report caused Alex to cut short his lunch, race to catch a train from Fellside station and be seen no more until evening when he returned home looking glum.

‘The fact is,' he told Margot, ‘things are pretty desperate. If they go on like this I shall lose her. I don't think she'll wait for me. Why should she?'

If she loves you, Margot thought but did not say, she won't mind waiting – for ever.

‘If we were engaged I would feel safer. And so would she. An engagement would give her the feeling of security she needs. I'm going to risk it, asking her, I mean, instead of waiting until I graduate. But don't you say a word to the parents. They'd be dead against it. There'd be the usual harangue about not being able to support a wife till kingdom come. You'd think they'd realize that an engagement isn't marriage, but it is a lasting attachment. What do you think?'

‘Girls like having a ring.' Margot selected the one certainty in a situation bristling with problems.

‘Good Lord! Yes. Well, that will have to wait. What do rings cost roughly? Any idea?'

‘They vary.' He was saving up for a car. It occurred to her that in Linden's case a car might be as strong an inducement to fidelity as a ring.

‘There are bound to be others, I know. This fellow she's having lunch with. Godfrey Barford. Never heard of him, have you?'

Margot had heard of Godfrey Barford. Phyllis and Freda kept her up to date with news. He was a newcomer to Elmdon. His father owned a chain of cinemas and his only son had already become a focus of interest in the town.

‘I don't think he's the kind of person Linden would be attracted to.' Her own juvenile infatuation with Linden had faded. There had been times when Linden's difference from other people, once intriguing, had shown in unappealing ways. But Linden had never lost her unique ability to seem accustomed to and only recently to have left an atmosphere in every way superior to the air she now breathed: a loftier region to which others might aspire in her company. Was it a region into which Godfrey Barford would fit? ‘She probably had lunch with him because he asked her and she was too polite to refuse.' Here she was on safer ground: Linden's politeness was indisputable, but Margot knew that she would have refused just as politely if it had suited her to do so.

By the evening of Boxing Day, as a result of strenuous efforts, the Hall seemed almost homelike, had even acquired a ramshackle temporary charm. The old customs were not forgotten. Sarah stayed in her room but came out on to the landing before the guests arrived and called over the banisters, ‘Do for goodness sake straighten the rugs,' as she had done scores of times at Monk's Dene. Edward responded with his customary feeble joke: ‘Who else is coming besides the Campbells?'

Phyllis and Freda arrived early: Phyllis, dark-haired, in flame-coloured velvet, Freda, fair, (no, not mousy, she was constantly assured) in sea-green silk with inlets of lace. There was time for the other two to try on Phyllis's new moleskin coat and strut about like models on a catwalk.

‘Not that it matters what we wear.' Freda laid it reverently on the bed. ‘If
she's
going to be here we might as well be invisible.'

‘Wish I was – or at least occupying a little less space.' Phyllis studied her dimensions in the mirror. ‘I'm so disgustingly healthy – and obvious.'

No consolation was offered, opinion being in favour of an interesting fragility.

‘And another thing: we tend to talk too much. Men like you just to stand about listening.'

‘But there's always so much to say,' Margot protested, ‘especially when we haven't seen each other for ages.'

An intriguing silence being beyond hope of achieving, they must rely, as Freda put it, on other forms of attraction.

‘Such as?' Phyllis was frankly sceptical. In any case it was time to go downstairs.

Meanwhile, Alex remained on edge, with justification. It was Godfrey Barford who drove Linden to Langland. He was a pleasant young man, a little too smartly dressed, his dark hair a little too glossy, his wallet a little too freely exposed.

‘Are you going to introduce me to your friends?' he asked, as he got out to open the first gate.

‘I don't think this would be a suitable time, would it? They might think—'

‘That I was trying to gate-crash?' He laughed. ‘In that case I'll leave the gates open for my retreat.'

Rather to her disappointment Margot did not see him. Alex was waiting on the front steps to open the car door before his rival could get out, to say a heartily insincere ‘How d'you do–' and to keep a firm hold on the door with intent to close it quickly.

‘Goodbye, Godfrey,' Linden said, ‘and thank you so much for bringing me.'

She had thanked him with the same sweet correctness for a number of other things. He found her sweetness and correctness irresistible. She had the social confidence he lacked and longed for, and the correctness he found so alluring did not prevent Linden from accepting gifts it was not quite suitable for him to offer, the less suitable the more sweetly. In return, as a companion she made him enviable and he was eager to show the deference she took for granted. He had learned a good deal from her and had still a good deal to learn, especially about Linden.

The Hall had a central staircase leading to a gallery on three sides, a feature which was to influence events on that evening. Margot had taken Linden to a bedroom to leave her things, though she removed her white fur wrap with obvious reluctance: beyond the range of fires the rooms were cold. She smoothed her hair and turned from the mirror and almost with a start of surprise Margot saw how lovely she was. It was months since she had seen her. In that interval Linden's cheeks had filled a little; her face, though still delicate, was more nearly a classic oval in its frame of dark hair. The somewhat heavy lids and long lashes gave mystery to her eyes, more blue than grey. The slightly fuller lower lip must have seemed – however deceptively – inviting.

It was not those details that Margot noticed just then: her impression was of grace and poise and harmony fused as in a picture or a piece of sculpture. Alex had preached to her that in a work of art there must be no false note: all should cohere to fulfil the artist's concentrated vision. In Linden's appearance there was no noticeable imperfection: she had flowered almost into beauty, a happy state. To be almost beautiful is to ensure being constantly looked at and there is always the hope that in a moment the suggestion of beauty may become beauty itself.

And yet, without reference to theory, Margot knew by this time that the graceful figure in the silver dress was no more the true Linden than the reflection in the mirror was the real girl. After the first catch of breath she was left with the sense of loss that comes when appearances are known to be misleading – as she had felt on the day of Katie's death when she had first detected a falseness in Linden.

All the same she was lost in admiration. Her own blue taffeta seemed heavy and provincial; her hair ungroomed, her manner too warm. But now Linden had arranged the floating panels of her dress and with the fur wrap over her arm was waiting politely for the signal to go down. Reluctantly Margot opened the door.

Linden's appearance may not have given unalloyed pleasure to the other girls. But to Alex? He stood at the foot of the stairs as Linden went down. Margot, following, saw his face upturned and was disturbed by its expression. It was rapt, intense and self-forgetful. It was as if nothing else existed for him, as if there were no one else there, only Linden. It wasn't like him. From the cradle, Alex had been self-possessed; now it was as if he had no self. She recognized in his attitude a quality of reverence. His very posture was that of a believer looking up to a divine presence. It was too much; it was beyond reason and, in this case, surely misplaced.

At any minute, at the first opportunity, he would ask Linden to marry him. Nothing could save him: he was going to make a mistake which could never be put right. With all the certainty of inexperience she was sure of it. Not for an instant did she think of his marriage to Linden except as a self-inflicted doom, the headlong downward plunge of a man determined to drown.

Except – common sense reminded her that it could not be headlong; it could not happen for years. On the other hand, for Alex an engagement would be as binding as marriage. There was nothing she could do to prevent the catastrophe; it wasn't her business and it would be impossible to reason with him, especially as not one sensible reason could be given to dissuade him. Wasn't Linden's behaviour, like her appearance, well nigh perfect?