Fortune's Lead (21 page)

I found I was tearing at the fastening of my dance-dress and pulling the long sea-green skirt urgently over my head. I couldn’t bear to start all
that
again. I could remember with hysterical clarity the business of my suitcases and Kevin’s jibe about getting better acquainted. I flung myself at the wardrobe, pulled out my pink suit, and began putting it on with shaking fingers. I would leave Thurlanger House
now,
if it meant walking all the way to Beemondham ... perhaps Henry wouldn’t even mind if I took the Mini that far to be fetched back later, since Ganner had got it going again. Whatever happened I must go, quickly, before I had to face suspicions which would be as heartbreaking as they were insulting, this time. After listening cautiously at my door, I darted across to the box-room opposite, where my suitcases had finally been put, grabbed one, darted back ... Everything but a few night things could be sent on later, or they could
keep
my things, as long as I could get away. It took a remarkably short time to be ready though every moment seemed too long, and I blessed the fact that there was a back staircase which came out just at the bottom of this one, so I would be able to slip out without any of the household or guests seeing me go. I was so afraid of being caught that I even held my breath as I tiptoed down, but I negotiated both staircases without halt, and made for the kitchen through which I would have to pass to reach the back door...

‘Goodness, Shah, where are you off to?’ Essie’s voice demanded as I put my hand out to open the kitchen door. As I swung round, she was standing in the passage between the green baize door and the kitchen. Alone. I breathed a prayer of relief that it was only her.

‘I—I’ve been called home—Essie, don’t bother your father, or
anyone
, will you? I—I don’t want to disturb the party. I’ll—take the Mini as far as Beemondham and get a train, but
please
don’t tell anyone—and—and then only your father, if he should ask later on where I am!’

‘Did you have a phone call, or something?’ she asked, looking at me doubtfully.

‘Y—yes.’ I listened, nervously, to the wave of party noises through the door behind her. ‘I
must
go. It isn’t anything awful, don’t worry, it’s j-just that I feel I’d better go home—I—’

‘Yes, okay,’ Essie said, though she gave me a curious look. ‘Dunno if you’ll find any
trains,
but you could always go on to Henning. Or Pa could get Ganner to drive you—’

‘No! I m-mean, no, thank you.’

‘Well...’ She gave me a considering look, and then looked down thoughtfully at her own fingers, fiddling with a fold of her dress. ‘I’ll tell you what. You could get a lift, to save you driving, and do me a favour at the same time. It’s Michael. You know, your—sorry,
not
your friend. I told him tonight might be a bit of a drag, and he suggested if I wanted to I could slip away for a bit. He’ll be waiting down by the gate, in his car. Well, as a matter of fact I’m rather enjoying it, and if you were to go down and ask him to drive you to Beemondham, you could tell him I’m not coming at the same time. Couldn’t you?’

‘Y-yes, all right.’ I didn’t know what Essie had thought of getting up to, but I clutched at the thought of Michael as at a straw. ‘I’ll go down and tell him, then. If—were you going into Beemondham?’

‘I don’t s’pose he’ll mind going that way,’ Essie said, giving me a clear-eyed look which I suspected hid an evasion. She saw me start nervously as someone bumped on the baize door behind her—but no one came through it. ‘As a matter of fact you can tell him I never actually
seriously
thought of coming. Only I should tell him that after he’s delivered you where you want to go.’ She gave me a wicked grin, sobered again, and asked gravely,

‘Are you all right, Shah? I mean, perhaps—’

‘I’m perfectly all right, and I’ll deliver your message to Michael if you won’t say I’ve gone,’ I said rapidly, and fled through the kitchen door as the baize door began to open. A stranger—a caterer, presumably—looked up at me in surprise as I hurried through the kitchen, but I tried a polite smile and shot on my way. Outside, there was a cold wind as I groped in the sudden darkness, and my eyes stopped being blinded by the lights I had left and I saw the drive going away ahead of me under the cold starlight. A quarter of a mile of drive...

I stumbled along it feeling sick with misery and thoroughly stupid, and had to force myself not to keep glancing back for pursuit. Why
should
anyone come after me, after all? Henry, I decided bitterly, had Machiavellian tendencies, in fact he was a plotter who worked with such subtlety that he ended up with
everything
in a tangle. By the time I reached the gate I was out of breath and in such low spirits that I hardly expected to see Michael’s car really there—it would have been typical of everything if he hadn’t been, and I had had to walk or go back for the Mini—but a dark shape lit by sidelights sat by the hedge, and I tried to pull myself together as I crossed to it. He must have seen someone coming—the starlight shining on my white suitcase, perhaps—because the passenger door was pushed open from the inside. I scrambled in beside him, looked at the pale surprised blur of his face as I pulled the door to behind me, and said, breathlessly,

‘H-hallo. It’s Charlotte, not Essie. She asked me to say she’s not coming, and—and if you’re driving to Beemondham,
would
you mind giving me a lift?’

‘She what?’

‘She says she’s not coming,’ I repeated. ‘She’s enjoying herself. I don’t know what gave her the idea to slip out anyway—’

‘I—see. And where are you going?’

‘Home. At least I’m trying to get home. Things,’ I said in a shaky voice, deciding to be honest, ‘are—are a little difficult.
Please
could you give me a lift, just as far as Beemondham anyway? I c-can get a train from there. I hope!’

‘Tell me one thing,’ Michael said in an odd voice. ‘Did things—break up for you
before
Essie said she wasn’t coming out?’

‘Y-yes, I suppose so. She just—’

‘Right,’ Michael said sharply, and started the car with such a jerk that I was thrown backwards against my seat. His headlights went on, and in the reflected light from them (after I had collected myself) I saw he was wearing a grim expression. He said nothing more, setting off along the lanes with a speed I would normally have thought too fast for our twisting course—though tonight I didn’t care how fast I left Thurlanger House. After several moments, unclogging my voice from the tears which were threatening it and trying to feel sensible, I said hesitantly,

‘Are you sure you don’t mind driving me?’

‘Yes, I do. I mind very much. Nevertheless,’ Michael went on as I opened my mouth, ‘I’ve got you for a passenger now, so you might as well stay there. But don’t talk to me while I’m driving, I want to think!’

I subsided, feeling thoroughly unwanted and a little injured. It was hard on Michael, I supposed, that he hadn’t been asked to the dance in the first place, and then Essie had let him down for a date she ought never to have made. Glancing at him, seeing that he still looked grim—very unlike his usual pleasant, open expression—I thought with some sympathy that he had probably been rather smitten by Essie, with her beautiful face and her boyish ways. She probably didn’t even know it, or cast his feelings aside as ‘sentimentality’ which she claimed to scorn. As we drove on in silence, I felt myself sinking into even deeper gloom about my own situation. It wasn’t bearable even to think about: Perhaps Kevin would think I’d run off with Michael ... No one had seen us go, of course. Desolately, I decided that no one would care, whoever I’d run off with—except perhaps Henry because it didn’t fit in with his plots and schemes.

I brooded miserably about people who made plots, and destroyed things, and bred mistrust: I wondered with sudden self-consciousness if
Henry
knew I’d been falling in love with Kevin, all that time, while I was fighting with him. Unhappiness engulfing me, I started to want to cry again, and gulped. It was just as well Michael didn’t want me to talk.

Some little time later, I wondered why we hadn’t arrived at Beemondham yet—or at least gone through a village which was on the way. Michael must be taking a different route: the lanes were twistier even than usual. I glanced at him, glanced away again, and knew that I didn’t really care very much
where
I was. Some minutes later, when I was sinking back into my brooding, I realized we were slowing down. There was nothing ahead but a solitary pub, large and solidly alone a little back from the road, but we were definitely drawing up at it. As I looked questioningly at Michael he swung the car left, passed several other cars drawn up in the park beside the pub, and drove into a yard. Then he switched everything off, so that the sudden pitch-dark made me blink, and reached across me to unlatch the passenger door.

‘Where—where are we?’ I asked uncertainly.

‘I thought we’d stop for a drink. Come on.’

‘But—’

He had already got out his side: anyway, it would be uncivil, I supposed, to complain, considering he was already so unwillingly giving me a lift. I left my suitcase where it was and followed him as he led the way under a signboard which said ‘The Dog and Duck,’ and in through the door of a public bar. By the time we were half way across the room he had me by the arm, with apparent amiability, guiding me along to a door in the further wall. I saw him make a sign to the landlord behind the bar and receive a nod in return: the landlord, I thought, looked curiously at me, so that I quickly averted my eyes. Then we were through into what looked like a private sitting-room, with a large round table in the middle of it, a couple of stuffed armchairs, and a staircase disappearing upwards from one corner. It was quite a pleasant room, with blackened beams and a fire lit to warm it: a wide window, closed but with the curtains undrawn, had diamonded panes which winked in the light. I turned round to try to make a civil comment to Michael, and saw him by the door through which we had come.

‘Sit down,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I shan’t be long.’

He went back into the bar, and I sat down, dispiritedly, and wondered how far we were from Beemondham. And whether there would be a train to be had when I got there. And whether anyone had missed me yet. It must be over half an hour since I left Thurlanger, but with all those people in the house I doubted if my absence was conspicuous. After a moment I got up and walked to the door into the bar and opened it, looking for Michael. The first person who met my eyes was Rosalind, sitting amongst a group of people in the far corner—and since she was looking directly my way and our eyes met, I closed the door again quickly. She had probably been there when we came in, though I hadn’t seen her: I wished I hadn’t seen her now, because it reminded me all over again of Kevin. Not that I needed reminding...

Michael came back with two glasses in his hand. I found he had brought me brandy: perhaps I looked as if I needed it. Sitting in one of the armchairs beside the fire, I drank mine quickly, hoping Michael would soon be willing to go on; though a glance at him showed he was sipping his drink very slowly, looking thoughtful and rather expressionless. He didn’t seem inclined to make conversation, and since the last thing I felt like doing was talking, I let the silence stretch out and concentrated on fighting my own misery. It was quiet in the room—either the bar wasn’t doing a very good trade for Saturday night, or the walls and door were very thick. Finally, seeing that Michael had at last emptied his glass, I got up, meaningfully.

‘Do you think we could go on now? It’s getting quite late, and—and I’ve still got to find a train, and they probably don’t run very late at night.’ Seeing that he hadn’t moved, I added, ‘If you want to stay here, perhaps I could—could ring up for a taxi from the bar. There was a phone in there, wasn’t there?’

‘Yes, but you won’t need a taxi.’

‘Look,’ I said, struggling for patience, ‘it was very kind of you to give me a lift, but I really must get—’

‘We’re both staying here,’ Michael said coolly without moving.

‘We’re what?’

‘We’re staying here for the night.’

‘
What?
’

‘You heard me. We are both staying here for the night.’

‘Michael,’ I said patiently, and stopped. He was giving me a quite unmistakable look. I gulped, wondered what on earth had come over him, and marched to the door. It seemed to have stuck. I twisted the handle, twisted it again harder, and heard him speak behind me.

‘It’s locked. I locked it when I came back in. We don’t want to be disturbed—do we?’

I gave the door-handle another tug, heard him laugh, and looked angrily over my shoulder. ‘I’m sure it’s a very funny joke,’ I said icily, ‘but I’ve had enough of it, from now! So if you have locked this door, please come and unlock it, at once! And d-don’t be so ridiculous!’

‘Oh, I’m quite serious. And it would be no use trying to break it down—that wood’s very solid, you know.’ As I turned round angrily to face him, he stretched out his legs lazily in front of him and gave me an amused smile. ‘You can give up the act—outraged virtue is only any use in the right place! And if you
will
take someone’s place, and ruin all my plans just because yours are ruined, you must expect what you get!’