Ivy Tree (3 page)

"Because your roots are here?" He smiled at my look. "They are, you know. I'm sure I'm right. There must have been someone, some Winslow, 'way back in the last century, who went to Canada from here. Probably more than one, you know how it was then; in the days when everybody had thirteen children, and they all had thirteen children, I'm pretty sure that one or two Winslows went abroad to stay. Whitescar wouldn't have been big enough, anyway, and nobody would have got a look-in except the eldest son . . . Yes, that's it, that explains it. Some Winslow went to Canada, and one of his daughters—your great-grandmother, would it be?—married an Armstrong there. Or something like that. There'll be records at Whitescar, surely? I don't know, I wasn't brought up there. But that must be it."

"Perhaps."

"Well," he said, with that charmingly quizzical lift of the eyebrow that was perhaps just a little too well practised, "that does make us cousins, doesn't it?"

"Docs it?"

"Of course it does. It's as plain as a pikestaff that you must be a Winslow. Nothing else would account for the likeness; I refuse to believe in pure chance. You're a type, the Winslow type, it's unmistakable—that fair hair, and your eyes that queer colour between green and grey, and those lovely dark eyelashes . . ."

"Carefully darkened," I said calmly. "After all, why go through life with light lashes if you don't have to?"

"Then Annabel's must have been darkened, too. By heaven, yes, they were! I remember now, when I first came to Whitescar she'd be only fifteen, and I suppose she hadn't started using that sort of thing. Yes, they were light. I don't even remember when the change took place! I was only nineteen when I came, you know, and straight from the back of beyond. I just took her for granted as the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen."

He spoke, for once, quite simply. I felt myself going scarlet, as if the tribute had been aimed at me. As, in a way, it was.

I said, to cover my embarrassment: "You talk or me as being a 'Winslow type'. Where do you come in?

You don't seem to conform."

"Oh, I'm a sport." The white teeth showed. "Pure Irish, like my mother."

"Then you are Irish? I thought you looked it. Is Con short for Connor?"

"Sure. She was from Galway. I've her colouring. But the good looks come from the Winslows. We're all beauties."

"Well, well," I said drily, "it's a pity I haven't a better claim, isn't it?" I stubbed out my cigarette on the stone beside me, then flicked the butt out over the cliff's edge. I watched the place where it had vanished for a moment. "There is . . . one thing. Something I do remember, I think. It came back as we were talking. I don't know if it means anything ..."

"Yes?"

"It was just—I'm sure I remember Granny talking about a forest, some forest near Bellingham. Is there something near your 'Winslow place', perhaps, that—?"

"Forrest!" He looked excited. "Indeed there is! You remember I told you that Whitescar was a kind of enclave in the park belonging to the local bigwigs? That's Forrest Park; the Park's really a big tract of land enclosed in a loop of the river, almost an island. The whole place is usually just spoken of as 'Forrest'— and the Forrests, the family, were there for generations. It was all theirs, except the one piece by the river, in the centre of the loop; that's Whitescar. I told you how they tried to winkle us out of it. The big house was Forrest Hall."

"Was? Oh, yes, you said the Hall had 'gone'. What happened? Who were they? This does sound as if my great-grandmother, at any rate, may have come from hereabouts, doesn't it?"

"It certainly does. I knew it couldn't be sheer chance, that likeness. Why, this means—"

"Who were the Forrests? Could she have known the family? What happened to them?"

"She'd certainly have known them if she lived at Whitescar. The family wasn't an especially old one, merchant adventurers who made a fortune trading with the East India Company in the seventeenth century, then built the Hall and settled down as landed gentry. By the middle of the nineteenth, they'd made another fortune out of railway shares. They extended their gardens, and did a spot of landscaping in the park, and built some rather extravagant stables (the last owner ran it as a stud at one time), and did their damnedest to buy the Winslows out of Whitescar. They couldn't, of course. Another cigarette?" "No, thank you." He talked on for a few minutes more about Whitescar and Forrest; there had been in no sense, he said, a

'feud' between the families, it was only that the Winslows had held their small parcel of excellent land for generations, and were fiercely proud of it, and of their position as yeomen farmers independent of the family at the Hall, which, in its palmy days, had managed to acquire all the countryside from Darkwater Bank to Greenside, with the single exception of Whitescar, entrenched on its very doorstep.

"Then, of course, with the mid-twentieth century, came the end, the tragic Fall of the House of Forrest." He grinned. It was very evident that, whatever tragedy had touched the Hall, it didn't matter a damn if it hadn't also touched Whitescar. "Even if the Hall hadn't been burned down, they'd have had to give it up. Old Mr. Forrest had lost a packet during the slump, and then after his death, what with taxes and death duties—"

"It was burned down? What happened? When you said 'tragic', you didn't mean that anyone was filled}"

"Oh, lord, no. Everyone got out all right. There were only the Forrests themselves in the house, and the couple who ran the garden and house between them, Johnny Rudd and his wife, and old Miss Wragg who looked after Mrs. Forrest But it was quite a night, believe me. You could see the flames from Bellingham."

"I suppose you were there? It must have been awful."

"There wasn't much anyone could do. By the time the fire brigade could get there the place was well away." He talked about the scene for a little longer, describing it quite graphically, then went on: "It had started in Mrs. Forrest's bedroom, apparently, in the small hours. Her poodle raised the place, and Forrest went along. The bed was alight by that time. He managed to drag the bedclothes off her—she was unconscious—and carry her downstairs." A sideways look. "They were damned lucky to get the insurance paid up, if you ask me. There was talk or an empty brandy-bottle in her room, and sleeping-pills, and of how there'd been a small fire once before in her bedroom, and Forrest had forbidden Miss Wragg to let her have cigarettes in her room at night. But there's always talk when these things happen—and heaven knows there'd been enough gossip about the Forrests ... of every sort. There always is, when a couple doesn't get on. I always liked him, so did everybody else for that matter, but the old woman, Miss Wragg, used to blackguard him right and left to anyone who'd listen. She'd been Crystal Forrest's nurse, and had come to look after her when she decided to be a chronic invalid, and she had a tongue like poison."

"Decided to be—that's an odd way of putting it."

"Believe me, Crystal Forrest was a damned odd sort of woman. How any man ever—oh well, they say he married her for her money anyway. Must have, if you ask me. If it was true, he certainly paid for every penny of it that he'd put into that stud of his, poor devil. There can't have been much money, actually, because I know for a fact that when they left England after the fire they lived pretty much on the insurance, and on what he'd got for the horses. They went to live in Florence—bought a small villa there, but then she got worse, went right round the bend, one gathers, and he took her off to some man in Vienna. Till she died, two years ago, she'd been in one psychiatric clinic after another—or whatever is the fashionable name for the more expensive loony-bins—in Vienna, and that had taken everything. When Forrest got back from Austria eventually, to finish selling up here, there was nothing left."

"He's back, then?"

"No, he's not here now. He only came over to sell the place. The Forestry Commission have the park-land, and they've planted the lot, blast them. That's the whole point. If I'd been able to lay my hands on a bit—" He broke off.

"The whole point?"

"Skip it. Where was I? Oh, yes. The Hall's gone completely, of course, and the gardens are running wild. But the Rudds— they were the couple who used to work at the Hall—the Rudds have moved across to the other side of the Park, where the West Lodge and the stables are. Johnny Rudd runs the place now as a sort of small-holding, and when Forrest was over here last year, he and Johnny got the old gardens going again, as a marketgarden, and I believe it's doing quite well. Johnny's running it now, with a couple of local boys."

He was gazing away from me as he talked, almost dreamily, as if his attention was not fully on what he was saying. His profile was as handsome as the rest of him, and something about the way he lifted his chin and blew out a long jet of smoke, told me that he knew it, and knew I was watching him, too.

"And Mr. Forrest?" I asked, idly. "Does he live permanently in Italy now?"

"Mm? Italy? Yes, I told you, he has this place near Florence. He's there now . . . and the place is abandoned to Johnny Rudd, and the Forestry Commission ... and Whitescar." He turned his head. The long mouth curved with satisfaction. "Well? How's that for a dramatic story of your homeland, Mary Grey? The Fall of the House of Forrest!" Then, accusingly, as I was silent: "You weren't even listening!"

"Oh, I was. I was, really. You made a good story of it."

I didn't add what I had been thinking while I watched him; that he had told the dreary, sad little tale—about a man he liked —with rather less feeling and sympathy than there would have been in a newspaper report; had told it, in fact, as if he were rounding off a thoroughly satisfactory episode. Except, that is, for that one curious remark about the Forestry Commission's planting programme. He had also told it as if he had had no doubt of my own absorbed interest in every detail. I wondered why. . .If I had some suspicion of the answer, I wasn't prepared to wait and see if I was right. I looked round me for my handbag.

He said quickly: "What is it?"

The bag was on the ground at the foot of the Wall. I picked it up. "I'll have to go now. I'd forgotten the time. My bus—"

"But you can't go yet! This was just getting exciting! If your great-grandmother knew about Forrest, it might mean—"

"Yes, I suppose it might. But I'll still have to go. We work Sunday evenings at my cafe." I got to my feet.

"I'm sorry, but there it is. Well, Mr. Winslow, it's been interesting meeting you, and I-"

"Look, you can't just go like this!" He had risen too. He made a sudden little movement almost as if he would have detained me, but he didn't touch me. The rather conscious charm had gone from his face. He spoke quickly, with a kind of urgency. "I'm serious. Don't go yet. My car's here. I can run you back."

"I wouldn't think of letting you. No, really, it's been—" "Don't tell me again that it's been 'interesting'. It's been a hell of a lot more than that. It's been important." I stared at him. "What do you mean?"

"I told you. This sort of thing isn't pure chance. I tell you, it

was meant." "Meant?"

"Ordained. Destined. Kismet." "Don't be absurd."

"It's not absurd. This thing that's happened, it's more than just queer. We can't simply walk away in opposite directions now and forget it."

"Why not?"

" Why not?" He said it almost explosively. "Because—oh, hell, I can't explain, because I haven't had time to think, but at any rate tell me the address of this place where you work." He was searching his pockets while he spoke, and eventually produced a used envelope and a pencil. When I didn't answer, he looked up sharply. "Well?"

I said slowly: "Forgive me, I can't explain either. But... I'd rather not."

"What d'you mean?"

"Just that I would rather—what did you say?—that we walked away in opposite directions now, and forgot all about it. I'm sorry. Please try to understand.!'

"I don't even begin to understand! It's perfectly obvious to me that this likeness of yours to Annabel Winslow isn't pure chance. Your people came from hereabout. I wasn't only joking when I said we were long-lost cousins . . ."

"Possibly we are. But can't you grasp this? Let me be blunt. Whitescar and Winslows and all the rest may mean a lot to you, but why should they mean anything to me? I've been on my own a good long time now, and I like it that way."

"A job in a cafe? Doing what? Waiting? Cash desk? Washing up? You? Don't be a fool!"

"You take this imaginary cousinship a bit too much for granted, don't you?"

"All right. I'm sorry I was rude. But I meant it. You can't just walk away and—after all, you told me you were nearly broke."

I said, after a pause: "You—you take your family responsibilities very seriously, don't you, Mr. Winslow?

Am I to take it you were thinking of offering me a job?"

He said slowly: "Do you know, I might, at that. I.. . might." He laughed suddenly, and added, very lightly:

"Blood being thicker than water, Mary Grey."

I must have sounded as much at a loss as I felt. "Well it's very nice of you, but really . . . you can hardly expect me to take you up on it, can you, even if our families might just possibly have been connected a hundred years or so ago? No, thanks very much, Mr. Winslow, but I meant what I said." I smiled. "You know, you can't have thought. Just what sort of a sensation would there be if I did turn up at Whitescar with you? Had you thought of that?"

He said, in a very strange voice: "Oddly enough, I had."

For a moment our eyes met, and held. I had the oddest feeling that for just those few seconds each knew what the other was thinking.

I said abruptly: "I must go. Really. Please, let's leave it at that, I won't annoy you by telling you again that it's been interesting. It's been—quite an experience. But forgive me if I say it's one I don't want to take any further. I mean that. Thank you for your offer of help. It was kind of you. And now this really is good-bye

..."

I held out my hand. The formal gesture seemed, in these surroundings, and after what had passed, faintly absurd, but it would, I hoped, give the touch of finality to the interview, and provide the cue on which I could turn my back and leave him standing there.