A Hint of Witchcraft (27 page)

His satisfaction would need to be very great indeed to equal that of Mrs Grey and presumably that of Linden though it is likely that her accustomed reticence concealed some misgivings. She was not long in discovering that Mrs Rilston's references to being hard up had some basis in fact. Miles, whom experience had already made wary, made it clear that the wedding must be quiet: there could be no lavish expenditure. It was unnecessary to point out that the bride's contribution would consist entirely of debts and the Rilston wealth was chiefly in land.

And of what use was land? It could provide her with none of the luxury she pined for and felt entitled to. When Mrs Rilston mentioned that the coal company had made an offer for the Langland estate, it seemed obvious to her that it should be accepted.

‘You will feel much better off with money in the bank,' she told Miles.

‘There's no question of selling Langland.' Miles spoke quite sharply.

‘Of course not.' Linden never argued, never chattered about her likes and dislikes, never gossiped or laughed very much. On the other hand, she was never rude, never sulked, never behaved incorrectly (except through no fault of her own on the evening of the dinner-party). When at last the emerald, expensively reset, appeared on her finger and the news flashed through the village (‘What did I tell you?' Bella said), Miles was not happy in his engagement but he was less unhappy than he had sometimes been. It would be a suitable marriage. The need to be convinced of its suitability had nevertheless given him sleepless nights. Was there not ample proof in historical records that even arranged marriages designed to protect property and lineage and to maintain the social structure were as often as not successful? Man and wife knew their separate roles and fulfilled them.

Suitable? In the small hours he came to hate the voice of reason that lectured him from within his own skull. Historical records had nothing to do with the quandary he had got himself into. All the same, he was calm and resolute and convinced that on a humdrum level of reality he was doing a sensible thing.

Then came the morning when with time on his hands he strolled down through the fields to take a few photographs before fitting a new roll of film.

CHAPTER XX

‘Try to relax,' Lance said. ‘You're doing very well. You haven't stalled once so far.'

‘But we're coming to a hill.' Grim-faced, bolt upright at the wheel, Margot spoke through her teeth. ‘I'll have to.…'

‘You know what to do. I'll tell you when. Now. Foot down, gear to neutral, foot up, rev, foot down, gear to second, foot up.'

‘I did it.' She turned her head, radiant. ‘I double-declutched.'

‘Watch where you're going. Stop when we get to that gate and I'll drive. I need to get on faster.'

He was always short of time but it had been his idea that she should learn to drive. She could come with him on some of his calls and practise for ten or fifteen minutes now and again. There had been some surprise when Lance, a gold medallist, his results brilliant, had turned down the offer of a promising opening in Glasgow and had come home to join his father's practice. No doubt he had his own reasons besides the obvious one that Dr Pelman, after years of working single-handed in harsh winters with crowded surgeries and always available for emergencies at three pits, was now suffering from arthritis and was very much in need of a partner.

Margot had set herself the goal of being able to drive by the time Miss Bondless came, Miss Bondless herself being so competent in so many spheres. Had she not once driven an ambulance under shell fire? Margot's bright look of triumph in having made the gear change raised Lance's spirits too. He saw it as a revival of the vitality she had seemed to lose. She was not changed, only subdued and would come to life again. But there were problems ahead. He was pretty sure that the news from Bainrigg House had not yet reached her. He had heard it from Mrs Roper when he visited her husband, a sufferer from pneumoconiosis. Margot would hear it soon enough. He had no intention of telling her.

‘I read of a very interesting case the other day.'

Margot moved over with alacrity: she was more interested in the human condition than in the internal combustion engine.

‘This story has a gloomy beginning.'

A doctor had been called in to certify a man as insane. Two medical signatures were needed. The patient, a quiet, self-effacing man, had completely changed and become violent, even dangerous. His distressed family had agreed that he must be put under restraint. But this second doctor had noticed certain physical symptoms – a swelling in the man's face, a curious condition of the skin, slurred speech, a thickening of the fingertips. ‘In short,' Lance warmed to the tale, ‘he was convinced that the man was suffering from thyroid deficiency and not insane at all. After a course of treatment he was completely cured.'

‘How amazing! I hadn't realized that a person's mental state could be affected like that – by some physical condition.'

‘Indeed it can. That was an extreme case – and the opposite is also true: emotional states can effect the physical condition – pulse, digestion, breathing – can cause pain and insomnia.…' He ransacked with enthusiasm the catalogue of human ills.

His attempt to divert the direction of Margot's thoughts was not entirely successful: she thought immediately of Miles, of the change in his manner at their last meeting. Since there was no other explanation, he must have been unwell. Illness had sometimes made her mother peevish and unlike herself. How childishly she had reacted! She had behaved like a medieval maiden waiting to be wooed. As a friend she should have insisted on finding out what was wrong. It was obvious now: he had been ill, had hoped that she would be concerned but would never inflict his trouble on her unasked.

Lance called on two patients in Fellside before driving her home and found her silent and preoccupied but not noticeably depressed. Margot was in fact regaining much of what he would have called her ‘tone'. She had enjoyed preparing a room for Miss Bondless and a trip to London with her father to buy clothes, go to theatres and hobnob with Freda, She had also had her hair cut. She had escaped the bob and shingle epidemic: longer styles were coming in and the light brown waves falling to the nape of her neck were very becoming. The wound of Miles's apparent change of heart was not healed, but gradually her natural optimism had allowed her to dream of a reconciliation. There had been no reason, she repeatedly told herself, no quarrel – that was unthinkable. He had been worried by his new responsibilities, saddened by Mr Rilston's death. It must have grieved him to miss another year at Oxford. When they last met, her own behaviour must have seemed more unaccountably cool and unsympathetic than she had realized.

Between the Hall and Bainrigg House, separated by no more than a walk through the wood or a short drive by road, there was now no contact. It was Alex who reported from Kenya that Miles had joined the flying club at Howlyn. ‘Lucky devil!' He had heard it from Angela Bavistock who wrote to him regularly. She had heard it from Gavin Roberts's younger brother who had been in Alex's year at Bishop's. Alan Cobham, on a visit to the club, had singled out Rilston as promising to be a first-class aviator and was keeping him in mind for one of his field displays. And when a DH60 Moth flew low over the priory and Ewan Judd said, ‘I bet that's Mr Rilston', Margot had stared up into the sky, dazzled, as when a child she had followed the flight of a bird. Miles would find it exhilarating to soar above the earth where, she realized with concern, he had never yet been really happy.

There had been one other point of contact with Bainrigg. She was arranging daffodils in a vase for the hall table when her father came out of his study with a letter in his hand.

‘I don't know what to make of this.' It was from his solicitor who had heard from the Rilstons' legal adviser that the Fellside and District Coal Company had made an offer for the demesne of 120 acres comprising the Langland Hall and priory estate.

‘Don't worry.' He smiled at Margot's alarm. ‘Our lease has eight more years to run. Besides the Rilstons won't sell. The old man was dead against parting with land. In any case it's one of the terms of the agreement that in the event of a sale I should have the first option to buy.'

He was less confident than he seemed. He had put too much capital into restoring the Hall and cottages, as well as buying equipment and levelling land for the smallholdings to be able to make an offer for some time to come.

‘Why should they want to buy? Is there coal here?'

‘Undoubtedly. They wouldn't want land for any other reason. It's unlikely that they would develop it in the short term but it would be worth their while to own it.'

He would have been easier in his mind if Frederick Rilston had still been alive: the old gentleman had appreciated his gesture in resigning over the chimney incident, so saving him from a possibly costly law suit. There had been a friendly understanding between them.

‘It wouldn't surprise me if that old blackguard Bedlow was behind this. He'd dig up the Garden of Eden if there was coal to be got out of it. If only we could get the Ministry of Works to take over the priory!' He must see Quinian, find out how the land lay and pull a few strings in Westminster and Whitehall. Nostrils dilated as by the scent of battle, he vanished into the study.

The matter remained in abeyance. Whether from inertia, reluctance to part with land or shrewdness in delaying the sale in the hope that its value would appreciate, the Rilstons appeared in no hurry to sell.

On the very day following Margot's decision to seek out Miles, an opportunity arose which made it possible to call at Bainrigg House, a perfectly natural straightforward reason for calling as a friend and neighbour. Her father's dream of establishing the Hall as a cultural centre in a district much in need of one was to be realized at last. With the co-operation of the Elmdon Music and Arts Society a musical evening with the Phoebus string quartet was to be held at the Hall.

As a friend then, Margot walked to Bainrigg by way of the priory wood; as an old friend and nothing more. It was unfortunate that every step revived memories of the last time she had walked that way almost exactly a year ago. Then as now there had been sunlight between branches, the fresh green of cuckoo-pint and hyacinth leaves, the pairing birds. She had shared with them the mysterious thrill of awakening life as she had walked on air towards the long-awaited meeting. Here was the drooping birch bough; the wicket gate into the field where once again lambs skipped and ewes stolidly munched; the first glimpse of yellow gorse above the stone-pit and – amazingly – she could scarcely believe it – he was there, in the place where they had sat together on a smooth shelf of stone in the sheltered hollow. He was holding a camera.

‘Margot!' He leapt up to level ground and came towards her. ‘Stand still.' A click and he had caught her, standing erect, smiling, forgetting why she had come, overjoyed that they had met at last as they had planned, only a year too late. What was a year but a gap in time leaving nothing changed? He was looking at her with the old tenderness. For her the moment was supreme.

For him? The first visionary moment passed, having done its terrible work in shattering the fragile peace he had seemed to find. It had made a mockery of any hope that he could live without her. Already, even before she came quickly across the grass to stand obediently still, her feet among the daisies – already his self-confidence was being threatened by the paralysis of doubt, and with good reason. Impetuosity had led him into a relationship he had never envisaged and could not have imagined, but he had accepted it as a release from the deepest loneliness he had known in all his lonely life.

Imperceptibly release had become constraint. He had recognized his dilemma even as he spoke the words that made it permanent. And now he would have to tell Margot, explain what could never be justified, though of course it could not directly concern her, not emotionally. He could not even assume that she cared what he did. He must not make the same mistake again.

‘How strangely things happen,' she was saying. ‘I never told you but I used to come here often – when I was younger, you know – hoping you'd be here, and now when I least expected it, here you are. Actually' – she remembered her role as friend, neighbour, promoter of the arts – ‘I was going to call at the house to leave you one of these leaflets.' She produced one from her bag. ‘An evening of music. I hope you'll come, for Father's sake as well as your own. I remember something you once said, ages ago. “Sometimes there's music”. It was a lovely thing to say, like a promise that music might come out of the air … if one waited.…'

Had he changed a little? He looked older. She saw the beginning of an anxious frown between his brows. He had certainly been glad to see her but he was now serious, desperately serious, without the grace of manner which had been so endearing.

‘When we last met' – she took courage – ‘I felt that you were changed and I wondered if you were unwell. You haven't been ill, have you? We've seen so little of you since Mother died.'

He must speak. A premonition of disaster put weights on his tongue. No words could lessen the enormity, as he now saw it, of his conduct. To speak of it could only make more inescapable a situation which had sometimes seemed unreal. He must remember that Margot was not involved. What seemed a catastrophe to him affected her only distantly if at all. Her concern was that of a caring friend. It had always been so from the beginning. The warmth and vitality he had loved had from the start misled him.

‘I should have known that even if you belonged to someone else I would have gone on loving you.' He spoke – now that it was too late – with a passion he had never known before. ‘I could have lived alone, hurting no one.…'