Ellis Peters - George Felse 08 - The House Of Green Turf (9 page)

‘
Yes
! You wished to know about him, I am telling you what happened. Nobody else can tell you, nobody else knows. She laughed at him, that girl. And then I heard the bushes crashing as he turned and ran away from her, down towards the lake. Only for a few moments, because the ground drops there, and this hillock where we are cuts off sound. There was this thrashing among the bushes, and sometimes his feet stumbling against a tree-root, and then it was quiet because he was down there close to the water, under the curve of the ground. But if there are voices in a boat on the lake, then you hear them. That night there were no boats, no voices, it was already dark. It was another kind of sound we heard, that girl and I, coming up from the water. A splash. Not so great a sound, clean, not broken, not repeated… but all the same, it was not a fish rising, even though there are very big fish in the lake. It was too late, too dark, and besides, one gets to know all such sounds. No, this was something, something heavy, plunging into the water and going down…’

She had turned in his arm, tensed and brittle against him, and he felt her eyes searching his face even in the dark, experimental, inimical and savage. Suddenly the night had engendered, seemingly out of her very flesh, a small, murderous wind that chilled him to the bone.

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said, ‘you’re making it up.’

‘You think I am lying? Ask
her
! When you go back to her, ask her!’

‘You’re crazy! What have I got to do with a woman like that? If this had been true you’d have told somebody about it then. Did you? Did you go down to the water to look for him? Did you tell what you knew when he failed to come back?’

‘What did I know? What did I
know
? That there were voices, that I heard a splash, nothing more. No, I never told anyone I was here in the trees that night. No, I did not wait to see, I did not try to find out anything. I ran back to the house, and I held my tongue.
And so did she
! Why should I speak? I wanted no part in it. What did I owe to any of them? Better to be quiet and keep out of trouble. So they never dragged the lake, they never even looked for him, he was simply the one who was out of favour and ran away. But
something
went into the lake that night. And she heard, as I did, and wanted not to hear, as I did, but with better reason. And he never came back for his baggage, did he?
And he never will
!’

She drew herself out his arm suddenly and roughly. ‘I’ve told you everything I know. I must go back.’

‘I still think you’re lying,’ he said, but without anger, and without conviction, only with an almost insupportable weariness and sadness.

‘Then ask her, when you go back to her. You will see.’

He could have denied Maggie a second time, but what was the use? Friedl was as sensitive as a dog to the presence of ghosts.

‘Help me do up my hair. They will be looking for me.’

He stood behind her and drew back the great fall of her hair, smoothing the sheaf between his hands; and then for a moment her hands were on his, guiding them, her body leaned back against him warm and yielding, and she turned her head and laid her cheek against his. Without movement and without sound she was weeping.

‘Friedl…’

‘No…’ she said. ‘You cannot help…’ Silenced under his kiss, her marred mouth uttered one lamentable moan, and clung for an instant before she pulled herself away. She thrust the comb into her heavy coil of hair. ‘Don’t come with me!’ she spat back at him, and was gone, abrupt and silent between the trees.

So now he knew what lay at the bottom of Maggie’s memory like truth at the bottom of a well. She, too, dazed and enchanted with her vision of fame, impatient with the importunate boy who blundered into her dream in defence of his own, had heard that muted splash round the curve of the lake-shore. And she had chosen to bury it, not to understand, not to remember. Not because she didn’t know what she had done, but because she did!

Surely she must have loved him
!

All the way across Switzerland in his hired car, Francis was eaten alive by the knowledge. What else could explain the obsession that rode her now? Nothing less than love, recognised too late, could have made this disaster so terrible to her. And yet there was some excuse for her. There had never been any proof, never any body, everyone else had taken it for granted that Aylwin had simply decamped, and their acceptance had made it the most reasonable course for her to accept that probability, too.

Only in her heart she knew that he hadn’t
!

Every time the knowledge surfaced she must have thrust it under again, until at last it drowned, and stayed down. Her conscious mind had succeeded in sloughing the memory utterly; but deep below the surface something in her had relentlessly remembered and reproached and grieved, and at the point of death had bestirred itself again to struggle into the light and challenge her with her debt.

He lingered a day in Zurich because he didn’t know what he was going to do, what he wanted to do, what he could bear to do. And about Friedl he thought only once during that time, with a violent tearing at his own conscience, and the shock of realising that the suppression of what galls and accuses is not so difficult or rare. That we all do it. That life would be impossible if we did not.

On the second day he asked for a passage home, but had to wait one more night before getting one. He was glad of the respite. Because what
was
he going to do about Maggie? No use trying to shield her by lying to her, she was utterly sincere when she said she wanted the truth, that she couldn’t live without truth. Did he even want to spare her? There were times during the flight when he realised that he wanted rather to rend her, to make her pay not only for Robin Aylwin, but for his own self-torment, too, and even for poor Friedl, with the tiny blemish on her flesh and the great cancer in her spirit, and the men who had slipped through her fingers because Maggie was innocent and dedicated.

He telephoned the hospital in Comerbourne as soon as he landed. He still had no idea what he wanted to say. It was almost a relief to get the ward sister, brisk and cheerful and immune, explaining that Miss Tressider had made rapid progress and was now discharged. Yes, she was still in Comerbourne, she could be contacted at the Lion Hotel, where she had taken a suite for a period of convalescence under supervision. She had wanted to have a grand piano, an amenity the hospital naturally couldn’t provide.

That was no great surprise. The voice that used her as a means of communication was restless and fretful, aching for an outlet again. Had she, after all, had any choice when she kicked love away from her? Wasn’t she, from the moment she realised the incubus that rode her, a woman possessed?

He telephoned the Lion Hotel.

‘Yes… Oh,
yes
!’ she said. The voice, full, clear and eager, drew her upon the air in front of his eyes. ‘Yes much better, thank you! Do come! I wondered about you. I shall be looking forward…’

‘I’ve been following,’ he said, with the even delivery of a machine, ‘the course of that last tour you made with Dr. Fredericks.’ He dared look at her only briefly and occasionally, because the blue of her eyes blinded him, so vivid and wondering and hopeful they were upon his face. ‘I stayed at a small resort called Scheidenau, near the German border. Do you remember it?’

‘Yes, vaguely. There was a lake… and a castle…’

‘And a small hotel called the Goldener Hirsch.’

‘You mean the one Freddy used to take us to? I’d forgotten the name, but I remember how it looked.’

The Lion Hotel was by the Comer bridge, and her suite was above the waterside. The tremulous light, reflected from a high ceiling and white walls, shimmered over her face, which was clear and pure as crystal, without shadows. She looked marvellously more substantial than when he had seen her in her hospital bed, but still fine-drawn and great of eye, and the tension that held her seemed more of hope than fear, as if the very act of sending him out to probe her disease had somehow absolved her and set her well on the way to a cure. Perhaps for a few days, in his absence, she had even begun to feel that setting out to look for the answer was the same thing as finding it, that now she could take up her life again, that the crisis was over.

He approached her not with clear statements, but with promptings, for what seemed to him a good reason. For Friedl, in spite of her reckless challenge to him to go back to his Maggie and ask her outright, might still have been lying. And supposing he confronted Maggie with this story, and still her memory failed or refused to fill in the blank spaces, so that she could never positively know whether the thing had happened like that or not? The last thing he wanted was to burden her with a grief she had not deserved. So he came towards his point by inches, waiting for a spark of understanding and enlightenment to kindle in the blue, attentive eyes; and the name he held back to the end. If she spoke it first, then they would both be sure.

‘That was a very important tour for you, wasn’t it? You had your first great successes, and you knew what they were worth. You began to see a really great future ahead of you, quite rightly. Do you recall anything else of importance that happened to you on that trip?’

‘In Scheidenau?’ She was watching him closely, her lips parted. The faint hint of an eager smile quivered and died, two pale flames of anxiety burned up in her eyes. He saw her fine brows draw together, painfully frowning. ‘I can’t think…’

‘In Scheidenau. On the last evening before you left. No? In the woods along the shore of the lake, below the hotel. There is a maid at the hotel named Friedl, a niece of the family. You remember her?’

She was harrowing all the recesses of her mind for anything that could account for his gravity. Every line of her, from the long fingers tightly clasped in her lap to the pearly curve of the skin over her cheekbone, strained thinner and whiter with mounting tension. ‘Please!’ she said. ‘If you know something, tell me!’

‘Are you sure,’ he said harshly, ‘that you want to know?’ He had meant to be gentle, but the rage and pain came up into his throat like gall. And now not only was she afraid, but also there was something deep within her stirring in response to his passion, tearing her in its frenzied attempts to get out, the deep-buried knowledge heaving into wakefulness at last. It was on its way to the light, and nothing could keep it imprisoned now.

‘Yes, I want to know.’

‘Friedl says that she was in that strip of woodland that night, the night before the Circus was due to leave. She says that she heard two people talking there, and that one of them was you. The other was one of the boys who toured with you. She says that he was arguing and pleading his cause with you, and that you were trying to get rid of him. She says he cried out at you that
something
would happen “if you didn’t want him!” He said—she remembers the words—“I won’t be fool enough to endure it.
There’s always an alternative
!”…’

Maggie’s lips moved, but there was no cry. She clutched the edges of the stool and leaned forward, trying to rise. He would never forget the sudden blind, blank stare of her eyes, lancing clean through him after another face, another accuser.

‘… and then he ran away from you down the slope towards the lake, and she heard—and
you
heard, didn’t you?—the splash of something falling into the water. And he never came back, that night or ever…’

She was torn suddenly erect before him, the convulsion of knowledge passed shudderingly through every nerve of her body and flamed into her eyes. She clutched her cheeks hard between her palms, and a wailing cry came out of her, thin and lamentable:

‘Robin
!’

He would not have believed that she could ever utter such a sound, or he provoke such a sound from her. Sick and mute, he stood and stared at his work. Whether she wanted the truth or not, they both had it now, and there was no shovelling it back into its grave.

‘
Robin
!’ she said in a rustling whisper. ‘So he never came… But how could I have known? He wasn’t any responsibility of mine… was he?
Was he
?’

She had appealed to Francis, and therefore she became aware of him again, no longer as an apocalyptic voice ripping away the layers of her forgetfulness one by one, but as a man, a live human creature shut in there with her, and one who knew more about her than any man should know. All that long-buried burden of her guilt lay there in full view between them. They looked at each other across the wreckage with horror, anger and hatred. Each of them knew what the other was seeing, and each recoiled in outrage from the violation of privacy involved. Nothing was hidden any longer, everything assaulted Maggie’s lacerated senses at once, his love, his resentment of love, his humiliation and rage at the invasion of his bleak solitude. Both his love and his antagonism were unbearable, and there was nowhere to hide.

Her body, newly schooled in the use of weakness where there remains no other weapon, found the only way of escape. Francis saw her deliberately, resolutely withdraw from him into the dark, and sprang across the room towards her a second too late. She let her hands fall, and dropped like a crumpled bird.

She came round in his arms, on his heart, aware of his agony before ever she heard his voice panting and whispering her name. Fingers light and agitated and gentle smoothed back the tumbled hair from her eyes. A broken and contrite murmur entreated her:

‘Maggie, forgive me… forgive me! Oh, my God, what have I done?’

She lay like a dead woman, and made no sign. It was the only way to keep any part of her integrity free of his touch, of his love which she did not want, of his nearness which affronted her, of his pain, of which she was mortally afraid. No one must come this close to her, no one touch her with this wounding fervour. She must get rid of him. He must know no more of her, he already knew too much. So she kept her eyes fast closed and her spirit tightly withdrawn from him, even when the shadow of his face stooped between her and the light, and he kissed her on the mouth. The touch shook her to the heart with pity and panic and distress. She held her breath and remained apart.

‘Maggie, speak to me… look at me…’

Suddenly he was up from his knees and plunging away from her across the room. She heard the faint single ring as he lifted the telephone.

‘No!’ She opened her eyes and raised herself unsteadily among the cushions of the couch, where he had carried her. ‘No, please don’t! I’m all right…’

He spun on his heel, and for an instant she saw such abject hope, relief and solicitude in his eyes that her head swam again. Then she felt as a convulsion in her own flesh the effort with which he drew down over his face the austere mask of professional detachment he normally showed to the world, and hid his nakedness from her. She thought wretchedly, we’ve destroyed each other. This proud man will never forgive me for frightening him so far off-course into humility and self-betrayal, any more than I can forgive him for penetrating so far into my jungle, and caring too much about what he found. What affair am I of his, outside the terms of the agreement? And what right had I to find my way under his skin and reduce him to this?

‘I was going to call your doctor. I think I should.’

‘No, please hang up. I don’t need anyone. I don’t want anyone.’ She sat up, smoothing her dove-grey skirt. ‘I’m sorry I alarmed you,’ she said. ‘It was only a momentary weakness. I shall be all right now.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve upset you too much. I wish you’d let me call someone.’

‘Please, no, it’s quite unnecessary. Now, if you’ll be kind enough to hand me my bag… It’s there on the piano…’

He brought it, handing it to her with fastidious carefulness not to touch, not to make any claim upon her, now that she was awake and aware. Her pallor was less extreme now, her face was calm, almost cold. The fear was gone and the hope was gone; she was past the moment of impact, it seemed, and beyond there was an emptiness, an area of shock, where as yet nothing hurt and nothing comforted.

‘Don’t worry about me, I shall be quite all right now. I’ll lie down and have a rest, after you leave. Thank you for all the work you’ve put in on my case, you’ve been most efficient, and I’m very grateful.’ She was riffling through the contents of her handbag, her head bent; and in a moment she looked up at him, holding out a sheaf of notes. ‘I hope I’ve reckoned up right. This is only the fee for the actual number of days, of course, including to-day. Please let me have the amount of your expenses, they must have been considerable. Don’t trouble to itemise, I shall be quite satisfied with a round figure. And again, thank you!’ Very courteous, very low, very final, that wild-silk voice of hers, dismissing him; but so gentle that at first he hardly understood, and when he did, he could not believe.

‘You mean you’re dispensing with my services?’ His face was whiter than hers.

‘But surely, you’ve completed your assignment very successfully. I asked you to find out for me what it was I’d done… to feel that I had a death on my hands. And you’ve done it. There’s nothing else I need.’

‘You’re accepting this without examination? I should have thought we needed to go into it in detail, to satisfy you that it’s authentic. I was too brutal, I beg your pardon! I wanted to avoid mentioning names to see if there was any genuine memory of this incident…’

‘You have seen,’ she said, ‘that there is. It needed only to be uncovered. There is no mistake. And I am quite satisfied.’

He stood gazing down at her, and felt time and the world grinding to a stop, and only a blank before him. She continued to sit there, pale, resolutely withdrawn into herself, holding out the sheaf of notes patiently in a hand that trembled a little from weakness; and her eyes had become the heavy, opaque blue of Willow Pattern china. There was nothing he could do. He was not going to plead with her for a small corner somewhere in her life, and he could not force his way where she did not want him to go. He had not even the right to turn on his heel and walk out, and leave her holding the money she felt she owed him. He was a hired employee, commissioned, paid off and dismissed. What could he do but take his fee, and go?