A Hint of Witchcraft (18 page)

‘She was there when it happened. Why should she say it if it isn't true?'

‘She could say anything. Nobody can contradict her.'

‘Except.…' She could not bring herself to name the one person who could – and certainly would – deny Toria's story.

‘You don't imagine I can confront Linden with a thing like this? What am I supposed to say? “I understand it was you who stole those damned four-and-elevenpenny beads”? I'd rather cut my throat.'

She understood – and had not foreseen – that it didn't matter now whether the story was true or false, he would never be at ease with Linden again, if he ever had been: an idol may not be the easiest of companions.

‘You always said one should never tell on another person. You were forever telling me things I should or should not do. I knew this would upset you, but as you may be going to marry her.…' She was skirting round the truth as Linden might do. It had been her deliberate intention to stop him from marrying, to save him.

‘Thank you very much. A nice little prig you've turned into.'

‘If I'm a prig, you helped to make me one with all your dos and dont's. You tried to make me strong and silent like a hero in one of those stories.' Actually, she thought, Tom Merridew couldn't have made a better job of it: she had struck a fatal blow and no second blow was needed. ‘You certainly tried.'

‘I certainly failed.'

‘You wouldn't even let me cry in peace.'

‘Don't be such a chump.' He was in no mood to tell her, was barely aware of it himself, that seeing her cry had always gone to his heart and undermined his magnificent confidence.

‘If you really love her, you can forgive her.'

‘Of course I really love her.' Was it true? He had seemed to fall in love as he did everything, with gusto. His devotion had been whole-hearted. ‘If it had just been taking the beads, wouldn't that have been forgivable? That futile business of keeping up appearances without two pennies to rub together.…'

Both knew the remark to be ridiculous; and he had seen at once, more keenly than Margot had done, how much was involved. The shabbiness of the affair disgusted him, the meanness of sheltering behind a person as helpless as Katie. He saw the irony of it – that an act of shallow vanity could result in an innocent creature's death. He remembered the scent of elder-flowers in the cool dawn, his first glance into the dark shaft, the limp body he had held; its pathetic frailty. Seeing his misery, Margot spared him the rest: there was no need to voice her suspicion that Linden might have seen Katie go to her death.

‘I'm going to bed.' She was weary of it all. For the first time they had almost quarrelled. ‘I suppose it was wrong of me to tell you. I couldn't make up my mind. I'm sorry.'

He had not been listening.

‘I really thought I loved her.' It was as if he needed to remind himself. ‘You don't understand what it's like to feel that way.'

‘I do understand.'

‘But I can't face her. I can't even ask her to deny such a rotten thing. But if it's true, I can't forgive her. I wouldn't ever be able to forget it.'

He scarcely noticed that she was leaving. From the door she looked back. His face had gone sharper, the healthy colour faded. It would haunt her, she thought, and wished she hadn't told him: it was wrong to interfere in another person's life.

‘I'll have to go away. In any case I'll be glad to get away from this place. It's like a morgue, especially with that woman prowling round like a death's head.'

‘She thinks you're wonderful. It was for your sake that she decided to tell.'

‘There's no such thing as a wonderful person.'

He remained as she had left him, rigid in his chair. For the first time in his ardent life there was nothing in the world he wanted to do. It was dark outside and the room was poorly lit, but he saw his situation as clearly as if the cold light of a winter day had laid it bare – his own crazy wrong-headedness and her vanity, lying and deceit. Linden herself he could no longer visualize. For years she had been his first and last thought every day. He dreamed of her, longed for her. When he was with her he had been oblivious to everything but her eyes, her grace, her smile. Now it was as if he had never seen her. It horrified him. She seemed lifeless like one of the cardboard figures Margot had played with in the nursery, clipping to the shoulders a party dress, a warm coat, a summer frock. She had faded from his vision leaving only a hand reaching for a string of cheap beads.

The disquiet he felt was not even a decent regret that it was over: it was dismay for what he was not feeling. He should have been prey to the memories that haunt unhappy lovers; he should have been able to hear her voice, its tender softness, a foolish endearment. He should have felt a hand stealing into his to lie there, intimately warm, a caress. That was how it should have been. Such things had never happened. She had given nothing. He had never known her thoughts. She had not even tried to attract him. The awful truth was that he had not only deceived himself as to her nature, he had wrongly identified his feeling for her as love.

He knew at last what Margot had known all along: that if it had been love he would have found it in his heart to forgive her. Her behaviour would have angered and disgusted him, but he would not have seen it as he saw it now in all its paltry meanness. If it had been a criminal offence, even murder, might it not have called forth some grand gesture on his part? He saw himself posing as Sir Galahad for a change, offering help and support. But Linden would never do anything so positive, not that compassion would stay her hand; she wouldn't mind watching some other wretch doing it, he thought bitterly, and wouldn't turn a hair at a public hanging.

He never wanted to see her again: he couldn't bear to witness her moral squirming or to hear her lie. It was bad enough to face his own superficiality. A new longing seized him – to be single-minded and self-forgetting like Lance. He could do with one of Lance's withering doses of advice. As he foundered under wave after wave of disenchantment, it would be like Lance to throw a life-belt.

As the grey of morning stole into the room, his feelings changed. Linden had passed from his mind: there was nothing about her that he wanted to remember. Neither did he think of Lance, nor of himself, nor did it occur to him that there was any need to think of Margot. As if she had stolen into his room with the first faint light, it was Katie who came into his mind. She made no reproach or appeal. He was too tired even to think, ‘What a shame'. It was just that somehow because of all she lacked, she was also without fault, the only person he had ever known who was entirely blameless. There was a kind of peace to be found in the thought that someone could live and die without hurting or harming or cheating or exploiting another human being. It was of Katie that he was thinking as he fell asleep.

*   *   *

The few days of his visit dragged painfully. Alex was uncharacteristically dull and silent; Margot worried and remorseful. As always she was affected by his mood: the cloud darkening his horizon darkened hers too, and inevitably not only hers.

‘There's something wrong with Alex. Isn't he feeling well? If only I could be downstairs.' Months of illness had made Sarah fretful.

Margot, who spent much of the day in her mother's room, was anxiously aware of the need to shield her from stress. Dr Pelman had warned of a weakness of the heart and insisted on rest and quiet for his patient. Alex's enforced cheerfulness during his visits to the sick-room was so patently bogus that they left his mother restless and upset.

‘I believe it is something to do with Linden,' Margot said.

‘Can they have quarrelled?' Sarah brightened, then hastened to add, ‘Poor Alex. But it may be all for the best.'

The phrase was comforting but only briefly. On the eve of his departure, brother and sister held another of the low-toned urgent conversations that seemed a feature at the Hall.

‘I've been thinking things over. My life here is finished. I'll never settle in Elmdon.' It had been intended that in joining a firm specializing in company law, he would be able to handle his father's problems at Langland. ‘I'm going to apply to the Colonial Office.' He had heard from a friend whose father had influence, that there were vacancies in administrative posts in East Africa. It would mean beginning as an assistant district officer but if his application was accepted, he would leave in June immediately after his finals and be away for two and a half years.

‘Don't say anything just yet. There's no need to upset Mother until she's stronger.'

When at the beginning of June he heard that his application had been accepted, he wrote first to Margot.

‘Try to break the news gently to them both. Just give a hint or two. I'll write to them after finals when I know the details.'

Margot did her best. Her father was at home at the time. On such occasions they had breakfast together and both enjoyed it with a slight feeling of being on holiday. It seemed a shame to spoil so harmless a pleasure but it had to be done.

‘Has Alex ever mentioned that he would like to go abroad?' she asked casually.

‘For a holiday?' her father asked from behind his newspaper. ‘Where?'

‘No. To work.'

‘Work!' The newspaper was lowered. ‘He's going to work at Bavistocks'.' The perusal of the editorial column was resumed but not for long. ‘Do you mean to tell me that he's trying to back out when they've been keeping a place for him for almost a year?'

‘He just happened to say that he had heard of vacancies for district officers in Kenya.'

‘And I suppose that was enough to blow him off course again. We might have known he wouldn't stick to anything for long. This constant chopping and changing will be the ruin of him. He lacks stability. That's always been his trouble.' The newspaper was abandoned, a cup of tea left to get cold. ‘Your mother won't be happy about this. Better not say anything to her. It's probably a flash in the pan.'

Which would be worse: to submit her mother to two or three weeks of worry and sleepless nights, or to a sudden shock when the news came? It seemed best to take her father's advice. When the letter came, Edward read it without a word and left the room. She waited in suspense while he made a long telephone call to Alex, then took the letter upstairs, came down and shut himself in his study. Alex had written to her too. ‘Perhaps it will soften their hearts to know that I've got a first.' Yes, that was the thing to concentrate on.

‘I can't quite take this in.' Sarah handed her the letter and lay back on her pillows as if the remaining strength had gone out of her. ‘He has done splendidly, but your poor father is bitterly disappointed about this change of plan. He shouldn't be. It is just the sort of thing he would do himself. But he was relying on Alex's help and looking forward to having him at home. And so was I. So very much. It doesn't feel like home when he's away.' She closed her eyes and rested for a minute. ‘It's because of Linden, isn't it? Has she refused him?'

‘I gather that he feels she has let him down.' The careful answer had cost Margot some thought.

‘Two years, he says. Time for him to get over it and find someone else. Someone with more warmth and openness and not quite so polite.' She smiled. ‘He's done so well but oh, how we shall miss him. Thank God I still have you. Without you I don't think I could go on, or want to. What kind of life will it be out there, I wonder? I do hope it won't change him too much.'

‘It will be an adventure. You know he was always talking about adventures.'

There was little outward fuss: as a family they were not given to making scenes. When Alex came home to say goodbye and collect some of his belongings, there were no recriminations. They all had tea in Sarah's room on each of the three days and talked of other things besides the parting. Alex would need a few days of strenuous shopping at the Army and Navy Stores for suitable clothes, tin-lined trunks to keep out white ants – apparently they ate everything – and as there would be field trips through wild bush country, he would need boots, guns, a pith helmet.… Edward advanced a generous sum without complaint although he was beginning to feel the pinch after almost a year of continuous spending.

But there were intervals when Kenya was forgotten and they talked about Langland and Monk's Dene and family friends. Edward failed to notice that Linden was never mentioned; Sarah and Margot did notice and were glad. The connection could be dropped without regret.

For Margot, to have done with Linden once and for all meant liberation from the compulsion to think about her. The harm she had done could never be rectified. Katie was dead.… Margot turned her mind resolutely from all the other changes for the worse. The list was complete. Linden had passed out of her life and could never hurt her again.

On the last morning, Sarah insisted on going downstairs fully dressed.

‘I don't want him to remember me as an invalid,' she said and somehow managed to delude both Alex and his father into believing that she was on the road to recovery.

Edward would see him off when he sailed, but Margot went with him to Elmdon station. Alex looked down from his carriage window at the young woman in straw hat and summer dress on the platform and recognized her as the little sister he had patronized and preached to and made use of – and needed. She stood erect, grave and rather gallant. It occurred to him now that it was too late that he was deserting her. He had often enough been away but never out of reach. If she should need him, he would not be there.

‘Meg.' She took his outstretched hand. He saw her swallow hard and blink back tears, shedding none. ‘What will you do?'

Without him? She felt the void. It yawned at her feet, unimaginably wide and damp and cold.