Ivy Tree (20 page)

I found later that Donald Seton was twenty-seven, but he looked older, having that rather solemn, withdrawn look that scholarship sometimes imposes on the natural reserve of the Scot. He had a long face, with high cheekbones, and eyes set well under indecisively-marked brows. The eyes were of indeterminate hazel, which could look shallow or brilliant according to mood. They were, indeed, almost the only inclination that Donald Seton ever varied his moods. His face seldom changed from its rather watchful solemnity, except to let in, like a door opening on to bright light, his rare and extremely attractive smile. He had fine, straight hair that refused discipline, but tumbled forward in a thick mouse-brown thatch that showed reddish lights in the sun. His clothes were ancient and deplorable, and had never, even in their fairly remote past, been 'good'. They reminded me somehow of his car, except that his person was not ornamented to a similar extent. He was the kind of man who would, one felt, have stigmatised even the most modest brand of Fair Isle as "a bit gaudy". He looked clever, gentle, and about as mercurial as the Rock of Gibraltar. He made a most remarkable foil for Julie.

She was saying, with that same air of delighted improvisation: "Lisa, this is Donald. Donald Seton. Darling, this is Lisa Dermott; I told you, she's a kind of cousin, and she's the most dreamy cook, you've no idea I Lisa, he can stay, can't he? Where have you put her}"

"Well, of course he may," said Lisa, but looking faintly taken aback. "How do you do? Have you really driven Julie all the way up from London? You must both be tired, but you're just in time for tea. Now, Mr.—Seton, was it?—"

"Didn't Grandfather tell you?" cried Julie. "Well, really, and he's always jumping on me for being scatter-brained I told him on the phone that Donald was bringing me I Why, it was the whole point of my coming now, instead of August, or almost, anyway. Donald's the most terrific big bug in Roman Remains, or whatever you call it, and he's come to work up at West Wood-burn where there's a Roman camp—"

"Fort," said Mr. Seton.

"Fort, then, isn't it the same thing? Anyway," said Julie eagerly, "I thought if I came now, I'd be up here when he was, and be here for the birthday party Grandfather's talking about, and anyway, June's a heavenly month and it always rains in August. Has she come?"

For once, Lisa's not very expressive face showed as a battleground of emotions. I could see relief at Julie's gay insouciance about her reasons for coming to Whitescar and the birthday party; avid curiosity and speculation about Donald; apprehension over the coming meeting between Julie and myself; pure social embarrassment at having another visitor foisted on her without notice, and a swift, house-proud calculation that she would manage this, as she managed everything. Besides—I could sec her assessing the smile Julie flung at Donald—it might be worth it.

"Of course we can put you up, easily," she said, warmly, for her. "No, no, it doesn't matter a bit, there's always room, and any friend of Julie's—"

"It's very good of you, but I really wouldn't dream of putting you to the trouble." Mr. Seton spoke with a quiet lack of emphasis that was as definite as a full stop. "I've explained to Julie that I'll have to stay near my work. I'll be camping up there on the site, when the students come, but for a night or two, at any rate, the hotel expects me."

"Ah well," said Lisa, "if that's what you've arranged. But of course you'll stay and have tea?"

"Thank you very much. I should like to."

"That's absurd!" cried Julie. "Donald, I told you, it would be much nicer staying here. You don't have to do the polite and refuse just because Grandfather forgot to tell Lisa you were coming, for goodness' sake I As a matter of fact I may have forgotten to tell Grandfather, but then I was so excited about Annabel and then it was three minutes and it's a call-box in my digs and you know Grandfather's always been as mean as stink about reversing the charges. Anyway, Donald, darling, you can't possibly camp at West Woodburn, it's the last place, and I've seen that site of yours; there are cows. And you've got to escape your dreary old Romans sometimes, so obviously you'll stay here. That's settled, then. Lisa, I can't bear it another moment. Where is she?"

I hadn't moved from the shadows of the passage. But the fraction before Julie turned, Donald looking past her shoulder, saw me standing there. I had been prepared for surprise, shock, even, in the recognition of everyone who had known Annabel before, but the amazement in Donald Seton's eyes jolted me, until I realised that, to him, I was a ghost of Julie. The look went, banished from his eyes immediately, but I wondered just what he had seen; a Julie grown older, thinner; not greyer, that would have been absurd, but somehow greyed? The eight years were dry in my throat, like dust. Julie had seen me. I saw her eyes widen, then the same look spring in them., I came out into the sunlight. "Annabel" For a moment she stayed poised, as it seemed, between welcome and something else. The moment hung suspended for ever, like the wave before it breaks. I thought, Lisa was wrong, this is the worst yet: I can't bear it if she hates me, and God knows, she may be the one to have the right.

"Annabel, darling I" said Julie, and dived straight into my arms and kissed me. The broken wave washed over me; the salt drops tingled and smarted in my eyes. She was laughing and hugging me and holding me away from her and talking, and the moments slid past with all the other moments, and was gone.

"Annabel, you devil, how could you, it's been such hell, and we were so unhappy. Oh, I could kill you for it, I really could. And I'm so thankful you're not dead because now I can tell you. That's the worst of people dying, they get away . . . Oh, lord, I'm not crying—these must be those tears of joy they always shed like mad in books, only I've never believed them . . . Oh, it's terrific, it really is! You've come back!" She gave me a little shake. "Only say something, darling, for pity's sake, or I will think you're a ghost!" I noticed that Donald had turned away, tactfully to examine the side of the Dutch barn. Since this was made of corrugated iron, it could hardly be said to provide an absorbing study for an archaeologist; but he seemed to be finding it quite fascinating. Lisa had withdrawn a little behind Julie, but she was watching unashamedly.

I looked at Julie, feeling suddenly helpless. What was there to

say, after all?

I cleared my throat, smiled uncertainly, and said the only thing that came into my head. "You—you've grown." "I suppose I have," said Julie blankly.

Then we both laughed, the laughter perhaps a little high and over-pitched. I could see Lisa^ looking at me with her mouth slightly open. It came to me suddenly that she was staggered and dismayed at the ineptitude with which I was playing this scene; all the more feeble since she had seen the way I dealt with Grandfather. As far as it was possible for me to do so at that moment, I felt amused. Of course there was nothing to say. Here at least, Lisa was a bad psychologist. What did she expect me to do? Make a charmingly social occasion out of this? My part in the scene had been far more convincing than she knew. The next second, uncannily, Julie was echoing my thought. "You know, isn't it silly? I've noticed it before, about meeting anyone one hasn't seen for a long time. You long and long for the moment, like mad, and then, when it comes, and you've got the first hullos said, there's nothing whatever to say. All that come later, all the where have you been and how did you get on? stuff. For the moment, it's quite enough to have you here. You do understand, don't you?"

"Of course, I'm just thanking heaven you do. I—I can't think of much in the way of conversation, myself." I smiled at her, and then at Donald, now gravely waiting on the outskirts of the conversation. "I'm still English enough to regard tea as a sort of remedy for any crisis. Shall we go in and have it? How do you do, Mr. Seton?"

"Oh, lord, I'm sorry," said Julie, and hastily made the introduction. "Only for pity's sake call him Donald, everybody does, at least, everybody he likes, and if he doesn't like them, he never speaks to them at all, which comes to the same thing."

I laughed as I shook hands with him. "It sounds a marvellous way of getting along."

"It works," said Donald.

"Oh," said Julie, at my elbow. "Donald has his very own way of getting through life with the minimum of trouble to himself."

I glanced at her quickly. Nothing in Donald's expression showed me whether this was intended to have a sharp edge to it, or anything in Julie's for that matter. She looked very lovely and gay, and she was laughing at him.

She thrust an arm into mine. "Where's Grandfather? Surely he's not up in the field in this weather. It's far too hot,"

"He's lying down. He does every afternoon now."

"Does he? I mean, does he have to?"

Lisa had gathered Donald up, so to speak, and, with the usual polite murmur about washing his hands before tea, was shepherding him ahead of us towards the house.

I said: "It's only a precaution. He has to be careful. He might be risking another stroke if he did anything too energetic, or had any sort of an upset. Go gently with him, Julie. I think my coming back has been a bit of a strain, but he's taken it remarkably well."

"And Con?" The sideways glance was disconcertingly shrewd.

I said lightly: "He's taken it very well, too." I wondered, by no means for the first rime, how much the eleven-year-old Julie had known about her cousin's disappearance. "You'll see him later. I imagine he'll take his tea up in the field with the men."

"Are you going to take it up? I'll help if you like, or we can make Donald come and carry everything—you don't exactly look as if you ought to be hiking loads around in this heat, if I may say so. What on earth have you been doing to yourself, you look so thin, and your figure used to be heaven, at least / thought so, which might mean anything, because when I was eleven my ideal was the Angel Gabriel and they're not supposed to have figures anyway, are they?"

"Julie! At least you didn't piffle on at that rate when you were eleven, or if you did, I don't remember it I Where on earth did you learn?"

Julie laughed. "Donald."

"That I don't believe."

"Well, he never speaks at all unless it's necessary, so I have to do enough for two on one person's sense. Result, naif my talk is piffle, whereas Donald's silence is a hundred per cent solid worth. Or would it be two hundred per cent? I never know."

"I see."

"And there was you." "I?"

"Yes. Nobody could piffle quite so well. The stories you used to make up. I can still remember them, and the funny thing is, a lot of them seemed somehow more real than you, or at any rate they seemed the reallest part of you."

"Perhaps they were."

She gave me a swift look as we went into the house, and squeezed my arm. "When you look like that you break my heart."

"I don't see why."

"You look unhappy, that's why. Whenever you're not actually smiling. It's just a look you have. It's not like you ... I mean, you weren't like that before."

"I meant, I don't see why you should worry over the way I feel."

"Don't you?"

"No. Why should you care what happened to me? I lighted out regardless, didn't I? And now I come back, like a ghost to trouble sleep. Why should you care?"

The grey-green eyes were open and candid as a child's. "Because I love you, of course," said Julie, quite simply.

The passage was dim after the glare of the sun. I was glad of this. In a moment I said, lightly: "Better than the Angel Gabriel?"

She laughed. "Oh, he stopped being top pop, years ago. Much better."

•••

In a way, Julie's homecoming was as exacting as my own.

Mrs. Bates was, inevitably, lying in wait in the kitchen: "And very nice it is to see you, Julie, and very smart you're looking, quite London, I'm sure. A real shame I call it, the way they make you work at the B.B.C.—not a chance to come up and see your poor Granda, not to mention others as I could name what would have liked a sight of you any time this past year. But there it is, birds leave the nest, which you might say is only natural, and them that is left has only to lump it, as the saying goes . . . And that was your young man that went through with Miss Dermott? 'Not official?' And what does that mean, may I ask? In my day, if we were courting, we knew we was courting, and believe me, we knew just where we was. Now don't you bother, Miss Annabel, love. Cora's taking the men's tea up, which you may be sure ain't no bother for her, seeing as Willie Latch is along helping this afternoon. Go on in, then. I'll bring the trolley as soon as the tea's massed, if you'll take the cake-stand ..."

Then there was Con, who came down unexpectedly from the hayfield, ostensibly impatient to welcome Julie, but curious, I knew, to see who had driven her down.

It was amusing to watch the meeting between him and Donald. We were quietly settled, waiting for Mrs. Bates and the tea-trolley, when Con walked in. He had presumably conformed by washing his hands, but he was still in his working clothes—old breeches, and a white shirt, short-sleeved and open at the neck. He brought with him, into the rather charmingly old-fashioned room, the smell of sunshine and hay, and—it must be confessed—a faint tang of horses and outdoor, sunbaked sweat. He looked magnificent He greeted Donald with none of the curiosity that I knew he was feeling. If he had been wondering about Julie's new escort as a potential threat to his own position, the worry, I could see, was dispelled as soon as he entered the room, and saw the unobtrusive figure sitting quietly in the old-fashioned chintz-covered chair by the fireplace. I could also see, quite well, that he was pleased—as Donald rose to greet him—to find himself the taller of the two by at least three inches. The contrast between the two men was certainly remarkable, and I saw an odd expression in Julie's eyes as she watched them. Lisa's face, for once, was much more transparent: one almost expected to hear the proud, contented clucking with which the mother-hen regards the swan that she has just personally hatched. The only person in the room who seemed unconscious of Con's overwhelming physical splendour was Donald. He greeted the other man serenely, and then turned back to resume his conversation with me.